The State Government has decided to adopt reverse auctioning process, instead of e-tendering, for the purchase of Iodised salt for distributing it among the people under BPl and Antyodaya schemes.
The process of tendering, according to officials, will begin by next week and distribution of salt among the beneficiaries will be started by October. The reverse auctioning had been successfully used for awarding coal blocks to private players recently.
NeMl, a subsidiary of National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange limited (NCDEX), has been nominated for the process. The State Government will provide salt at a cost of 50 paise per kg per household per month to the families coming under BPl and Antyodaya schemes.
On the benefits of reverse auctioning, an official said that the new system will help make the process more efficient as well as transparent for the common man. “The first benefit of reverse auctioning is it takes less time than e-Tendering providing chances of continuous improvements for the bidder while in e-Tendering process the bidder gets only one chance. It also provides wide range of suppliers for bidding while in e-Tendring process, there is only a limited scope of participants,” said Food and Supplies Department Secretary Vinay Kumar Chaubey.
Under the system, an upper ceiling price is fixed by the department above which no bidding will be accepted. Company with the lowest bidding process will be declared l-l by NeMl after taking consent from the department.
“Reverse auctioning will also help in keeping the rate flexible which will also be very close to the market rate as there could be a different supplier for each of the districts in the state. Auctioning could also be done once in a month or on quarterly basis, depending on the response and situation at that point of time.
It will help in regularizing the price of the commodity as there are fair chances of getting a different rate than what was quoted last month,” added Chaubey.
Over 50 lakh families coming under BPl, additional BPl and Antyodya categories will be benefitted under the scheme.
The scheme had been first launched by the Shibu Soren Government in early 2010, when then Deputy Chief Minister Raghubar Das, in charge of Finance Department, had announced that the State would provide iodized salt to BPl families at a subsidized rate of 25 paise per kg.
The scheme was then re-announced by the Arjun Munda Government later. The proposal then was finally passed by the cabinet in August, 2011 but the price just got doubled to 50 paise per kg due to the Reserve Bank of India’s decision of withdrawing 25 paise coin from the market.
The department after much delay short-listed a Gujarat-based firm Vishal salt Industries for the job and decided to bring around 12,000 metric tonnes salt in the first phase but the salt could not be distributed among the beneficiaries due to some unknown reasons.