World Bank not at ease in Albania, again

TIRANA, Sep. 5 – Last week Albania’s Health Minister Petrit Vasili came out at a news conference to say that he did not consider the annulment of a tender for the purchase of medical equipment with the funds from the Word Bank as troubling.
He said this took place because the only company that competed was not serious.
Vasili acknowledged that the tender of USD 3.6 million had been annulled, adding the money was given by the World Bank for other services, and they were not considered as lost.
“The respective commission for the evaluation of offers, which was created based on the procedures, declared as winner the company with the lowest price. It was the World Bank that did not accept the lowest price. The case was re-evaluated and another company was declared as winner. The World Bank insists to declare as winner another company. Unfortunately, this company had made false declarations and it had used false documents, and of course, the experts of the World Bank were informed on this,” said Vasili.
Immediately after that the World Bank office in Tirana put out a statement referring to an article published at a local newspaper.
It said that procurement under World Bank financed projects was conducted by the Borrower, in accordance with relevant national laws and the Bank procurement guidelines with due consideration to economy, efficiency, fairness and transparency.
The Albania Procurement Law is clear that in case of discrepancy between the two, the Bank guidelines would have the precedence.
The lowest bid under the above-mentioned tendering process for medical equipment was found to be technically not responsive. For this reason, the Bank advised to revise the bid evaluation report. After the revision, the award was recommended to a firm whose offer was USD 600 000 higher than the lowest technically responsive bid. That lowest bid, however, was disqualified for reasons unrelated to bidder’s capability and resources to perform the particular contract. The evaluators’ concern was related only to local service provider.
As per Bank’s procurement guidelines, the appointment of a local service provider is required for contract signature, but its identification is not a requirement for bid submission and the qualification of such local provider is not material to the responsiveness of the bid or the qualification of the company for purposes of the bid evaluation and contract award.
Before its final decision, the Bank had several communications with the Borrower providing an opportunity to rectify the situation and conduct the bid evaluation in accordance with the agreed procedures. Given that the borrower didn’t follow the stated evaluation and qualification criteria in the bidding document and did not recommend award of the contract to the lowest evaluated responsive bidder, the Bank is not financing this contract.
A few years ago the Bank also acknowledged that due to some irregularities they had found problems for some project in southwestern Albania.