Chennai: Hundred days after the TVK govt took office, the municipal administration and water supply (MAWS) department floated more than 1,000 tenders for several low and high-value civic works across the 25 corporations and municipalities. The tenders are seeing competitive bidding, saving upto 30% of project costs to the exchequer.TOI analysed about 10 random tenders from various corporations and municipalities, including Madurai, Salem, Trichy, Karur, Vellore, Salem and Nagapattinam. The tenders for works such as road laying, biomining, water supply schemes, and digging wells saw negative bidding, with up to 10 contractors participating in the works, ranging from ₹50 lakh to ₹100 crore. Besides savings and competition, the tenders also reflect the restriction of contractors’ cartelisation.“There’s healthy competition for all contractors, from small to big civic works. It is also creating savings for the exchequer. We’ve instructed that any escalation must receive written concurrence from higher authorities. We’ve also asked officials to ensure proper estimates are prepared as per the schedule of rates so that there’s no escalation in project costs,” a senior offiical said.Greater Chennai Corporation, too, recently issued a circular, noting that if a project’s cost escalates beyond 2% during bidding, it should have a written concurrence from higher authorities. Besides this, officials have been instructed to avoid splitting projects and avoid limited tendering for non-urgent works. As a next step, govt is working on accurate preparation of budget estimates as per revised SOR.Jayaram Venkatesan, convener of anti-corruption NGO Arappor Iyakkam, which tracks tenders closely, said if a contractor is bidding ₹28 in the minus for ₹100, then the project cost itself must have been only ₹65, with a profit margin of up to ₹7 for the contractor. “No contractor will bid in the negative if it causes a loss for them. Even the entry-level contractors will bid for at least 2% profit. The negative bidding is a good start. It also reflects the fact that officials had been preparing inflated estimates all along, and they should now prepare accurate estimates,” said Venkatesan, adding that it was too early to say cartels have been broken.“Even in the DMK regime, the first two years saw competitive tendering,” said Jayaram, adding that the govt floats tenders worth ₹3 lakh crore annually, and if they’re saving up to 20%, then ₹60,000 crore is saved.
