The leading Nepali IT company has formed a consortium with PT Pura Barutama, Indonesia, and Diletta Maschinentechnik GmbH, Germany, to make the offer to supply the passports at just US$ 2.99 apiece. [break]
"We herewith guarantee delivery of up to 20 passport printers within 1 to 2 weeks enabling you to meet the ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization] deadline for the issuance of MRPs [by] April 1,2010," Edith Klinser Mag, project manager of Diletta, said in the expression of interest submitted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
PT Pura Barutama is the current supplier of Nepali passports while Diletta is the global leader in passports and ID printing solutions with over 30,000 installations in more than 100 countries worldwide. Many governments like Australia, Belgium, France, Italy, Switzerland etc rely on Diletta passport issuing systems.
The consortium submitted its offer to the ministry on Wednesday.
The offer seems one of the cheapest among the ones received by the ministry to date. Before this offer, the Indonesia´s government-owned PERUM PERURI had offered to deliver the passports at US $3.5 apiece.
Similarly, India´s Security Printing and Minting Corporation has offered the MRPs at US$ 4 each while French security printers Oberthru Technologies has quoted US$ 3.65 per passport and Malaysian firm HeiTech Padu Berhad at US $3.75.
The consortium has also specified its work of scope under the quoted price.
"This [the offer] includes the passport book, personalization printing and administration. We will take the completed passport application forms from MoFA and deliver the personalized machine readable passports," said the consortium in the offer.
The MoFA has been receiving proposals form interested parties at competitive prices for its MRP project though the government is still undecided on the process of procuring the passports.
kiran@myrepublica.com
Related story
Govt entrusting same company to print passports for past 13 yea...
