…Clears 11 firms for purchase of PHCN assets

BY MICHAEL EBOH, with Agency Report

The Bureau for Public Enterprises, BPE, yesterday cleared three firms to bid for the liquidation of the Nigerian Telecommunications Plc, NITEL, and the Mobile Telecommunications Plc, MTEL.

BPE, in a statement by Chigbo Anichebe, Head, Public Communications, said it received a total of 35 Expressions of Interests from different firms while only the three companies which scored 75% and above in their technical proposals where cleared.

According to him, based on the requirement in the Requests for Proposal that only those who scored 75 per cent and above in their technical proposals would be invited for financial bid opening, the three prospective liquidators passed the threshold and the approval of the National Council on Privatization, NCP, was sought and obtained to open and evaluate the financial bids and further submit the winning bid to Council for final approval.

Anichebe also stated that the National Council on Privatization (NCP) at its meeting held yesterday, approved 11 companies to bid for two Power Holding Company of Nigeria’s assets — Afam Power Plc and Kaduna Distribution Plc.

He said four companies — Primeniza Energy Limited, Televeras Group;, Foby Energy Limited and TES Power Limited — were pre-qualified to bid for Afam Power while seven firms — Axis Power Distribution Limited, Nahco Consortium, Incar Power Limited, Aiteo Consortium, LEDA Consortium, Northwest Power Limited and Copperbelt Consortium — were cleared to bid for the purchase of Kaduna Distribution Company.

Anichebe stated that the prequalified bidders would be invited to the financial bid opening stage after the submission of the required post-qualification security.

He said, “A total of nine bids were received for Afam Genco and 11 bids were received for Kaduna Disco on 16 April 2013 and in accordance with the approved transaction timeline, the evaluation of those bids was conducted between April 18 and 28, 2013 by two teams of eight evaluators with representations from BPE, Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Ministry of Power, CPCS, NIAF and Nexant.

“The first stage of the evaluation was the establishment of completeness and substantial responsiveness of the proposals.

“Of the nine proposals received for Afam, seven were deemed to be complete and substantially responsive and were passed to the technical evaluation stage; and from the seven responsive proposals emerged the four pre-qualified bidders.

“Of the 11 proposals received for Kaduna, seven were deemed to be complete and substantially responsive and were passed to the technical evaluation stage.

“Council has in this regard, adopted the principle of continuing due diligence on all the prequalified bidders.  Consequently any bidder found to have made representations that cannot be corroborated or create doubt about their financial/technical capability will be subject to disqualification.”