Five international security printing companies have submitted bids for Nepal’s multibillion-rupee e-passport contract. The bid documents were opened on Friday on the premises of the Department of Passports.

According to Tirtha Raj Aryal, director general at the Department of Passports (DOP), three of the five firms have submitted bids for the first package, and four have submitted documents for the second.

IDEMIA has been given the printing permit from the time of Nepal’s transition from handwritten passports to machine-readable ones in 2010, and even now when the country has transitioned to e-passports, also known as biometric passports.

According to the Department of Passports, Malaysia-based IRIS Corporation Berhad, France-based IDEMIA, and Germany-based Muhlbauer Group have submitted bids for the first package, which involves the procurement of eMRTDs systems, including pre-enrolment, enrolment, data management and delivery.

Similarly, IDEMIA, Poland-based Polska Wytwornia Papierow Wartosciowych S.A, Germany-based Veridos, and Muhlbauer Group have submitted bids for the second package that involves the supply of “eMRTDs booklet with personalisation, quality control and packing system.”

The current passport supplier, France-based IDEMIA, and Germany-based Muhlbauer Group are competing for both packages.

In the last bidding process in 2020, three international firms were in the fray, and IDEMIA won the bid. The French firm has since been printing and supplying e-passports. As the passport stock is depleting fast, the department aims to award the contract without any further delay. The DOP currently has fewer than one million passports including ordinary, diplomatic, official, travel documents and seaman’s passports.

The total budget of the new contract is around Rs12 billion, and the winning bidder should provide 6.4 million passports within the designated time of five years.

The DOP has handed over the bid documents of both packages to an evaluation committee headed by Aryal. Experts from different government agencies and offices are involved in the evaluation process, which is expected to conclude the technical assessment of both packages within 15 days.

After completing the evaluation, the committee will prepare a report within 15 days and begin assessing the financial bids, said Aryal.

Any firm dissatisfied with the technical evaluation can file a complaint.

After resolving complaints, if any, and reviewing the financial bid, the final evaluation will be released, according to Aryal.

“We then issue a letter of intent, invite the firms for negotiations, and ask them to submit a bid performance guarantee,” said Aryal.

The entire process is expected to be completed within one month to 45 days, at the latest, according to Aryal.

Earlier, some prospective bidders had lodged several complaints against the bid document, claiming that it favoured IDEMIA. Then the DOP had made several amendments to the bid document as demanded by the bidders and also extended the bid submission deadline.

“But those companies and firms that had registered several complaints with the CIAA [Nepal’s anti-graft agency], the Public Procurement and Monitoring Office (PPMO), and the Department of Passports did not participate in the bidding process despite being given enough time and other concessions,” said another official at the department. This suggests they were not ready to participate in the bidding process.

The department had issued a global tender on November 28 for printing, supplying and installation of the passports system from interested international bidders. The deadline for bid document submission was extended twice at the request of prospective bidders.