Mr. Tran Quang Huy's Project Management Board is a public non-business unit, directly under the Hai Phong City People's Committee, has the task of being the investor of a number of construction investment projects using the State budget capital and other lawful capital sources in the city.

In the process of posting the contractor selection plan and bidding notice on the National Procurement Network, Mr. Huy's unit encountered the following difficulties:

Point k, Clause 6, Article 89 of the Law on Bidding provides for prohibited acts in bidding: "Dividing projects and procurement estimates into bidding packages contrary to the provisions of this Law for the purpose of appointing contractors".

Thus, the investor must combine a number of items suitable with the actual capacity of the current contractors into a bidding package for open bidding in accordance with the provisions of the Bidding Law in order to save time and cost in bidding, simplicity and convenience in management,... as the following example:

Bidding package for geological survey consultancy, feasibility study report preparation:

+ The geological survey part applies the form of a contract with a fixed unit price because the work at the time of contractor selection and contract negotiation has enough conditions to clearly determine the unit price to perform the tasks. the work is in accordance with the requirements of the construction contract, but the exact volume of work has not been determined, so the form of a contract with a fixed unit price shall be applied;

+ The preparation of the feasibility study report is a simple consulting job, so the package contract form should be applied.

However, when posting on the National Procurement Network, the above consulting bidding package can only choose one of two forms: Package contract or time-based contract.

Moreover, when posting the bidding documents, including this content in the web form, it will not be approved for the same reason.

The solution to adjust the contractor selection plan to split into small bidding packages is to be entangled in prohibited acts according to the provisions of the Bidding Law, incompatible with the project schedule and not meeting the benefits as described.

Mr. Huy asked the Ministry of Planning and Investment to consider and give detailed instructions on how to handle the above situation.

The Ministry of Planning and Investment responded to this issue as follows:

Clause 5, Article 2 of Circular No. 01/2015/TT-BKHDT dated February 14, 2015 of the Ministry of Planning and Investment stipulating that, when applying the form of bidding documents, in special cases, it is necessary to apply a contract according to the application form. If the price is fixed or the unit price is adjusted, the investor and the bid solicitor shall base themselves on the provisions of the Bidding Law and Decree No. 63/2014/ND-CP to apply accordingly.

Currently, according to the provisions of Circular No. 04/2017/TT-BKHDT dated November 15, 2017 of the Ministry of Planning and Investment, the consulting service bidding package is organized for bidding on the National bidding network system. only package contracts and time-based contracts can be applied, not fixed unit price contracts, adjustable unit price contracts and mixed contracts.

Accordingly, for consultancy bidding packages that have applied the type of contract with fixed unit price, adjusted unit price, etc., it is necessary to adjust the contractor selection plan in the direction of not bidding online.

According to the Government Newspaper