Is it true to question the supplier's opinion? The answers in the industry are different and controversial.
"Bid" is an admission ticket.
At present, procurement agencies in many places do not allow suppliers who do not have procurement bids to participate in bidding. There are two reasons for this: one is to facilitate management, and the other is to check the qualifications of suppliers.
In addition, procurement agencies in many places believe that they have the obligation and responsibility to assist the bid evaluation committee in checking the qualifications of suppliers. The opportunity of qualification examination is arranged when the supplier purchases the tender and registers it.
There is also a view that whether to buy a tender can also reflect the integrity of suppliers. For example, Wu Yuhe said: "The first requirement of government procurement for suppliers is honesty. The tender is valuable because it contains the production cost, but the supplier evaded the responsibility of bearing the production cost of the tender by opportunistic means. In the next procurement process, how can buyers and agencies trust it? " In addition, if you don't buy the tender, but participate in the tender, you must obtain the contents of the tender through certain channels, which seems unfair to other suppliers who buy the tender.
There should be no threshold for public bidding.
Suppliers can participate in government procurement without purchasing bidding documents, and the above practice sets a "threshold" for procurement.
Some experts believe that any supplier can participate in bidding, unless it is clearly stipulated in the bidding documents that qualified bidders must obtain the tender through legal channels, that is, buy the tender from the procurement agency. As for whether the supplier's bid is valid, the judges will judge it according to the bidding documents.
There is also a distinct point of view, that is, it should not be advocated to stipulate in advance that bidding documents must be purchased before bidding. Wu Guowei, director of Guangdong Foshan Government Procurement Center, is a supporter of this view. He said: "The purpose of public bidding is to solicit suppliers who participate in government procurement and maximize competition. If it is agreed that the tender must be purchased from the procurement agency, it often implies that the supplier has to pass the preliminary examination of the procurement agency, which is somewhat suspected of setting a "threshold" and violates the original intention of open bidding. " According to this view, it can be inferred that suppliers can participate in government procurement without purchasing tenders, effectively canceling the "preliminary examination" link. "In this way, suppliers can participate more extensively and without barriers, thus achieving full competition. At the same time, this also reflects the openness of government procurement procedures. " Wu Guowei said.
Wu Jiyong, director of the Jiangsu Provincial Government Procurement Center, agrees with this view, but he considers it from a legal perspective. He believes that not buying the tender does not necessarily lead to the supplier's non-substantive response, and as long as the supplier makes a substantive response to the tender, it should not be deprived of its right to participate in the procurement; As for whether the supplier's qualification meets the requirements of the tender documents, the judges will decide according to the tender documents. He suggested that suppliers who did not purchase the bidding documents should be allowed to pay the bidding documents, which would make other suppliers who paid the bidding documents feel fair and have no complaints.
There is no charge and no guidance for bidding.
The first chapter of the Government Procurement Law clearly stipulates the principle of "three publics and one trust", which is also its development direction. According to this theory, some experts in the industry predict that issuing tenders without charge will become an inevitable mode. Free means that suppliers will have more and more convenient channels to obtain bidding documents in the future. Ji Tao, director of the government procurement center in Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province, believes that if this happens, there will be no basis for the "preliminary examination", and the door of government procurement will be opened to all suppliers to the greatest extent, which embodies the principles of openness, fairness and justice.
Some procurement agencies believe that allowing suppliers who do not buy tenders to participate in government procurement will lead to their ignorance of suppliers. Allowing suppliers to bid regardless of whether they are qualified or not will aggravate the number of invalid bids and lead to the increase and waste of procurement time and cost.
This view is not unreasonable.
But the problem is that if the supplier's qualification is reviewed at this time, the content of the review is likely to be aimed at this purchase.
We don't deny that most procurement agencies are performing their duties and assisting the bid evaluation committee in the qualification examination of suppliers. But after all, there are still some people who are immersed in unruly circles and refuse to extricate themselves. In this way, the supplier's qualification examination behavior in purchasing tenders can easily evolve into "designating brands" and "setting thresholds", especially today when China's government procurement system is not perfect and the government procurement awareness is not deep enough, which is inevitable.