February 13: The Department of Transport Management (DoTM) has initiated the process of purchasing additional 1.48 million smart license cards. The department awarded the contract to Smart Card and Solutions (SELP), a French company, for the purchase of the new cards.
The department has awarded the contract to the company for USD 1.24 million (Rs 140 million). The department had called for a tender for the smart license card in the second half of last August, in which Malaysian company Iris Berhad Corporation, French company SELP and Indian company Madras Security Printers had bid for the contract.

The Malaysian company Iris Berhad had participated in the bidding process with the cheapest price of USD 26,000 (Rs 96.1 million) while the Indian company Madras Security had made a bid of Rs 192.2 million. However, the department awarded the contract to the French company SELP, which had bid the highest amount. As per the contract agreement, the price per card bid by SELP is Rs 100.

Ram Chandra Poudel, director of the department, informed New Business Age that the contract was awarded to the French company after considering the technical and financial aspects of the proposal.

"The contract was awarded to a company with good technology based on financial and technical proposals," he said. "There were six technical deviations in the proposal made by the Malaysian company," he informed.

The department awarded the contract to a French company, which had made an expensive offer after the Malaysian company did not submit the required certificate and did not provide information about the operating system. As per the contract, the company will provide all the cards to the department within the next 90 days.