Bid for government tenders, local firms told

The Rwanda Information Technology Agency (RITA) has advised local firms to bid for Government tenders. This was during a two-day training of officials working with ICT-related Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Briefing the trainees, the RITA Deputy Executive Director, Patrick Nyirishema, advised prospective bidders to comply with the bidding requirements and guidelines of the Rwanda Public Procurement Agency, formerly National Tender Board. According to Nyirishema, the workshop will instill in the officials knowledge on how they can prepare tenders in line with the Public Procurement Law and World Bank guidelines. The participants are representatives of SMEs in the ICT sector who include directors, sales and marketing personnel and IT technical personnel RITA’s procurement consultant and trainer, John F.A Etidau, said that the training was organized after a recent survey indicated a general lack of procurement knowledge within SMEs. It was observed that Rwandan firms lose bids to foreign ones because they are generally still young, uncompetitive and lack knowledge in procurement guidelines set by the government, World Bank and other development agencies. Etidau encouraged local firms to form joint ventures with big multinational firms in order to be competitive, develop business profiles and gain the necessary experience. “There is hope that this will familiarize the private sector with the benefit of joint ventures, partnerships, associations with foreign firms as a means of building capacity of local firms and indirectly foster foreign direct investment in the country,” he said, referring to the training. “This capacity building programme is to acquaint the SMEs in the ICT Sector with the current status of the implementation of the National Information Communication Infrastructure (NICI) Plan,” he added. One of the trainees who preferred to remain anonymous, said that the training was timely. The trainees decried the common practice of government agencies, especially ministries, of illegally refusing to give out soft copies of bidding documents before payment of a non-refundable fee of Frw10,000. “We have the right to access these documents before paying in order to get details about a particular bid being floated,” observed a participant. RITA officials pledged to solve the problem but warned that only hard copies are accepted during the actual bidding. Issues of transparency were also raised, but the RITA consultant said that a three-man committee made up of experts normally reviews the bids in the presence of the representatives of bidding firms. Other safeguards are elimination of committee members who have relatives or links with bidding firms. RITA plans to organize other workshops in order to develop a plan for public and private partnership in the ICT sector. Ends