Admissibility And Opening Of Bids For Public Contracts In Cameroon
Administrative documents, technical and financial bids must be submitted in different and separate sealed envelopes.
The envelopes referred to above shall bear the number and subject of the invitation to tender and addressed to the Project Owner. They shall not reveal the identity of the bidder.
The envelopes containing the bids shall be submitted against a receipt at the place specified in the tender notice.
Upon receipt, the envelopes shall be numbered and dated with indication of time of deposit, and entered in order of arrival in a special register prepared by the public contracts regulatory body. These envelopes shall remain sealed until the moment provided for their opening.
The start of the bid opening session shall not be later than 1 (one) hour after the time limit for receipt of bids set in the tender documents.
Bids received after the deadline for submission shall be inadmissible.
The Chairperson of the tender’s board shall ascertain that the envelopes are sealed and stamped. He shall open them, quickly check the administrative documents produced by bidders and initial the original copies of the bids and administrative documents.
He shall read out or invite someone to read out the administrative documents and main items of the bids, in particular, the deadlines and, where applicable, the amounts of financial bids and any rebates granted.
Attendance at the bid opening session shall be limited to the representatives of bidders and the number of such representatives per bidder shall be 1 (one) even in case of a group of enterprises.
A bid opening report shall be prepared at the session. The bid opening report shall indicate the admissibility of bids, their administrative compliance, prices, rebates and deadlines. A copy of an extract of the said report to which shall be appended the attendance sheet signed by all the participants shall be handed to each bidder at their request.
The tender’s board’s bid opening report shall, where applicable, specify the composition of the evaluation sub-committee. However, all information on the composition shall remain internal to the board.
The Chairperson of the tender’s board shall ensure the safe-keeping of the original copies of all the bids received.
The Chairperson of the tender’s board shall certify a copy of each of the bids submitted, which shall be placed at the disposal of the public contracts regulatory body at the close of the bid evaluation session.
For bids to be opened in two stages, a sealed copy of the financial bid shall be forwarded to the public contracts regulatory body for safe-keeping.
Where an administrative bid document is missing or found to be non-compliant during the bid opening session, the bidder concerned shall have 48 (forty-eight) hours to produce or replace the document concerned. However, any bid without bid bond during the bid opening session shall be rejected.
At the end of the bid opening session, all the bids, including those rejected, shall be handed over to the Evaluation Sub-Committee set up by the tender’s board. The Evaluation Sub-Committee shall comprise at least 3 (three) members including 1 (one) representative of the Project Owner or the Delegated Project Owner.
For works, supplies and quantifiable service contracts, administrative documents, technical and financial bids shall be opened just once at the same session.
For unquantifiable service contracts, including intellectual service contracts, the administrative documents and technical bids shall be opened first. In the second stage, only the financial bids of bidders having scored the required technical mark shall be opened in the presence of the bidders concerned.
