The Public Procurement Commission (PPC) is continuing to blacklist contractors over the supply of false information and it remains hopeful that the penalty will deter others bidding for state contracts from breaching public tendering regulations.
“The PPC hopes that it will serve as a deterrent because it is not fair if contractors are awarded contracts on the basis of false information or any other breach outlined in the regulations,” PPC Chairperson Carol Corbin told Sunday Stabroek.
“It also indicates that evaluators and review boards will be more meticulous in their examination of tender submissions. [The] ultimate goal is to improve the public procurement system because poor performance on contracts is also a ground for debarment,” Corbin added.
Just over a week ago, the PPC announced the most recent debarment, that of Manboadram Sukhai trading as M. Sukhai Contracting Services, for a period of one year effective April 22, 2020.
Corbin pointed to the listing on the PPC’s website of 15 debarments and noted that in each case the specific ground for the sanction was the provision of false information in the submission of a tender.
The 15 listings on the PPC website, dating back to 2016, comprise at least seven firms/individuals, and three others that appear to share the same addresses in Lethem and on the East Bank but were trading under different names. The periods for which they are barred from bidding for state contracts range from one year to 12 years. “We also automatically debarred contractors debarred by our development partner. This is a provision of the Debarment Regulations, which came into effect mid-2019,” Corbin explained. (It is for this reason that the Lethem-based Vevakanand Dalip Enterprise, which was debarred by the IDB from December, 2018 until December 2030, has also been debarred for the same period here.)
The PPC has notified all government agencies of the debarments in order to ensure that they do not award those listed any further contracts.
In a circular seen by this newspaper, the PPC said no procuring entity shall solicit or accept bids, proposals or quotations from a debarred supplier or contractor, or consider bids, proposals or quotations submitted by a debarred supplier or contractor. It added that any suspension or debarment of a potential bidder or supplier would not affect any existing contact entered into between the supplier or contractor and the procuring entity.
“NO supplier or contractor shall subcontract with any supplier or contractor that is subject to a debarment or suspension order. No procuring entity shall give consent to any subcontract with any supplier or contractor that is subject to a debarment or suspension order,” it further added.
Contracts worth a total of $3.5 million were signed with Virgin Islands firms over the past week to repair a school and two administration buildings on Virgin Gorda that were damaged by Hurricane Irma in 2017.
On Friday, the government, the Recovery and Development Agency, and Roy Garraway of Quality Construction Limited signed a contract totalling $1.7 million to completely rebuild two blocks of the Bregado Flax Educational Centre.
The project includes internal refurbishment and replacement of the roofs of Blocks Two and Four, ultimately providing 11 classrooms, a science laboratory, an internet technology laboratory, an art room, a library, bathrooms, and staff facilities, according to the RDA.
The works build on two completed phases that included repairs to Block One as well as temporary classrooms and staff facilities, according to government.
Admin building
Also on Friday, a contract for the reconstruction of the Flax Administration Building was awarded to Metro Construction for $1.2 million.
The facility will combine e-governance with public services including the post, social security, inland revenue, labour, immigration, water and sewerage, environmental health, the magistracy, the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Civil Registry and Passport Office, and the district office, according to government.
On Tuesday morning, Quality Construction signed a second contract, for $625,400, to repair the island’s North Sound Administration Building.
This project includes the refurbishment and redevelopment of the two-storey building and will include mail and postal sorting facilities, a reading room and lecture space, a library, a police office, and office spaces for civil servants, according to the RDA.
Tender process
All three contracts were awarded following tender processes carried out through the RDA, and all are funded by Caribbean Development Bank loan funding. Governor Gus Jaspert called the signings a “win-win-win” situation.
On Tuesday, Mr. Jaspert also promised that a contract for repairs to the Vanterpool Administration Building will be announced soon, “completing a suite of public administration offices” on the island.
Premier Andrew Fahie said he is “happy to see that the CDB loan funding is able to assist” with the work.
“Government is pleased to see the RDA pushing forward so that our infrastructure can be built and reengineered with the appropriate technology, reliable procurement system, operational capacity, inbound and outbound logistics, marketing and sales, and supporting services,” Mr. Fahie added.
He also applauded Anthony McMaster, acting CEO of the RDA, for stepping up to the leadership position after the March resignation of Paul Bayly.
“It is good to see one of our own sitting in the head seat of the RDA,” he said. “I always, and will always, and was always con- vinced that one of our own could lead the recovery.”
Mr. McMaster announced that starting next week, the agency will host trainings that will “dissect the tender processes” to give more VI individuals and companies opportunities to bid and win contracts.
He also noted that this week, two more contracts would be signed, totalling $3 million.
Mr. Jaspert said, “I’m very conscious that for quite a while our dedicated public service on Virgin Gorda has been operating out of substandard conditions.”
‘In the pipeline’
He also noted that several projects are “in the pipeline” with funding from the CDB loan and government, stating, “This is the start over the next few weeks of ten extra projects coming forward, with each one injecting money into the economy.”
Local contractors are being urged to attend the Recovery & Development Agency’s (RDA) capacity-building workshops.
Speaking at a recent contract-signing, the RDA’s Acting Chief Executive Officer Anthony McMaster said the workshops are designed to better equip contractors with the required knowledge needed to become a highly competitive bidder when pursing a tendered project.
“I would implore all the contractors in the BVI to take advantage of the training sessions. You can even go as far as registering with the RDA, because if you register with the RDA, once we put tenders out we also send notifications to you as a contractor to let you know a tender is there, you may have an interest in it,” he stated.
“So it is not just dependent on whether or not you actually see the newspaper or you were able to visit the website, you will actually get an email telling you that it is there. So you have effectively no excuse to not be a part of the process,” the RDA boss added.
Next workshop on Virgin Gorda
McMaster also said the RDA will be hosting their next workshop on Thursday, May 14 and encouraged interested contractors to make an effort to attend.
“We are going to be hosting a workshop on Virgin Gorda, and of course, because of social distancing we are limited to 15 participants.”
“If we have more than 15 persons registered we will conduct a second training exercise on Virgin Gorda, but we will make sure that every single contractor on the island that has an interest to learn, have the opportunity to learn, and we will provide that training,” McMaster added.
Seminars part of government’s plan to develop contractors
Meanwhile, Premier Andrew Fahie said that the RDA’s workshops are part of his government’s plan to ensure that local contractors receive the necessary guidance to elevate them to the next stage.
In circumstances where there is limited access to funding for entrepreneurship and innovation, innovation procurement opportunities tend to be highly welcomed. However, although the benefits might be apparent, using case studies, Guest Contributor, Telly Valerie Onu, who is a Blockchain advocate, Impact and Fintech Innovator and Management and Development Specialist, highlights some of the challenges and risks of innovation procurement, and suggests how they can be managed.
Back in 2016, I recall a riveting article written by Montserratian author, Nerissa Golden, entitled “Open Innovation – Can we do this in the Caribbean?” The writer keenly described a fascinating study tour at an Incubator located in the High Tech Campus at Eindhoven in Holland, Netherlands, where every single presenter used the term Open Innovation. She marvelled at how business was conducted, where competing companies shared ideas and knowledge fluidly in the spirit of collaboration which resulted in improved and more useful technology and products.
What is Open Innovation?
Open Innovation can be in the form of informal collaborations or formal partnerships. The popularity of open innovation has been driven by its effectiveness in expanding the innovation potential of an organisation. Open innovation gives businesses and organisations the ability to access new (and sometimes left-field) ideas for new products and services and in solving problems. By casting the net wider, companies can end up with solutions they’d never have thought of otherwise.
However, in comparison to the present reality of the Caribbean, where brilliant minds have the potential to change the development and growth trajectory of the region by harnessing their capabilities of solving local and regional problems, Open Innovation has been subject to political lip service as the culture of lack of trust lingers heavily in a region struggling to re-design and transform itself. The execution of strategic alliances are few and far between, as independent entities struggle against the notion of losing their Ideas. However, the reality is that ideas are a dime a dozen, with no rightful owner. Even as ideas are developed into early concepts, ideas alone do not trigger innovation. It is the business model and the team that triggers execution.
Innovation procurement
According to the World Economic Forum, innovation offers the potential to improve everyday life, grow regional economies and solve societal challenges. Governments, industry and communities around the world are delivering programmes that seek to encourage innovation and achieve a better future. So whether it’s at the firm level or macro level, collaboration is the key to unlock innovation and drive change. It is no wonder that the writer in her piece observed that the main ingredient of Eindhoven’s success was its ability to foster open innovation amongst multiple stakeholders. where the trifecta of government, knowledge and business collaborate as public-private-partnerships to ensure the ecosystem thrives.
So, how can one foster an environment where content creators and consumers can discover each other to develop solutions that solve problems? While there are many methods for fostering the development of an open innovation ecosystem, one clear opportunity lies in leveraging innovation procurement.
In accordance with Nesta, the “power of the public purse” to drive innovation was identified as a key opportunity. Around the world, procurement processes are being redesigned and redeployed to create new demand for innovation and accelerate the emergence of inclusive innovation ecosystems by engaging and providing opportunities to underrepresented communities and people
According to Startup Genome in 2018, globally, procurement remains an area in which governments have taken the least action. However companies have been flocking to open innovation challenge platforms to crowdsource ideas and solutions.
With no such thing like a magic bullet, fast forward to 2020, it comes as no surprise that the Caribbean has finally moved beyond hackathons and have started adopting co-creation and open innovation competitions leveraging innovation procurement as a new mechanism to foster regional innovation.
In a landscape devoid of proper frameworks to guide strategic alliances and public private partnerships, innovation procurement offers a number of benefits to leapfrog our development, however, it does not come without its associated challenges.
So far there are two main methods used in innovation procurement. These are Public Procurement of Innovative solutions (PPI), and Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP). The former, is used when challenges can be addressed using innovative solutions that are already in small quantities in the market, while the latter, is used when there are no near-to-the-market solutions yet and new R&D is needed. In some cases, the solution might be very early at the concept or proof of concept stages, but in many cases, solutions can be deployed as a pilot before they are scaled.
The phases of innovation procurement (Source: European Commission)
The Good
On the one hand, innovation procurement has demonstrated its ability to deliver solutions to challenges of both public and private interest as their methods serve a key purpose in de-risking the most promising innovations step-by-step through solution design, prototyping, development and first product testing.
Therefore, unpacking the benefits of innovation procurement can speed up product development significantly, boost product visibility, which lends a lot of credibility to a growing company, and can be a great way to attract new business interest from investors.
On the public sector side, it enables the public sector to modernise public services faster while creating opportunities for companies in the Caribbean to gain leadership in new markets as it moves the region on a trajectory towards outcome based problem solving in a flexible manner, as suppliers are selected and rewarded based on their capability to deliver against defined outcomes.
The Bad
As with any solution, how open is open? There are some serious risks and unintended consequences if open innovation is done incorrectly without clear rules.
While sharing information and expertise with others outside the business, you can boost the profile of your company. But consider what happens if you submit a solution which is way beyond the proof of concept (idea) stage and is a minimum viable product (MVP) with associated execution know-how, i.e product and business models fully developed, and ready for commercialisation? In other words, the idea has crossed over into the execution phase? What are the consequences of sharing too much and how can that put your business at risk?
There are some legal challenges that can be easily overlooked, which can cause unnecessary hurdles if not thought through already in the beginning of an open innovation project. If they aren’t considered and handled in a professional manner from the start, the risks and possible negative impacts will not only affect your open innovation project, but can harm your brand image as well.
As an open innovation strategy, while it aims at decreasing the risk inherent to the innovation process, it may at the same time increase the risk inherent to collaboration with different partners.
For example, Compete Caribbean, a regional multi-donor driven programme, recently launched a unique Blockchain Open Innovation Challenge for the Caribbean, which focuses on open innovation calls for both problem owners (public/private) and problem solvers (innovators). The call for problem owners, is targeted at solving a need by leveraging blockchain innovation, while the calls for problem solvers are focused on matching them to specific crowdsourced challenges and financing those innovators solving existing problems.
In a specific Call for the Digital Transactions and Money challenge, one of the pre-selected Problem Owners, a regional non-profit association comprised of public and private financial institutions and regulators, namely, the Caribbean Settlement Network (CSN) submitted and was pre-selected for this challenge to address the need for solutions for cross-border settlement. However, two members of the non-profit association, are actually Fintech solution providers, namely BITT, a Barbados based Fintech wallet provider firm already working on a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) with the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) and Massy Group, owner of subsidiary Massey Technologies and SurePay with a massive bill-pay retail network providing solutions in some markets across the region.
While I do not believe it was the intention of the donor to create a scenario of inequality, they inadvertently opened up the real risk of involuntary knowledge spillover (Cassiman and Veugelers, 2002) – leakage of critical internal resources; and disclosure of core competencies of a company submitting a solution to the challenge – to these potential cooperation partners that could be competitors. This risk is so great that if not mitigated, it can impact the ability to compete fairly, due to the lack of transparency of the roles and capabilities of all the stakeholders involved.
Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong for companies doing open innovation to seek external ideas with an outside-in approach. It is however, good governance practice for companies to not hide behind the corporate veil of non-profit associations and enter these challenges based on their own merits and objectives.
The Ugly
In another highly publicised case study, in 2018, the Government of Montserrat (GoM), took a tech startup, Rovika, which was founded by Dennison Daley and Manish Valechha in 2013, to court to contest ownership of an eCabinet Executive Document Management software called ExcoTrack.
Prior to the establishment of Rovika, In 2005, Mr. Daley, a programmer and former government employee, was approached by the then Cabinet Secretary to develop an access database system to track Cabinet decisions. Later in 2012, the system was scrapped in favour of a newer web-based version of the Cabinet documentation monitoring/tracking process in an effort to provide efficient ways to monitor/track the GoM’s decisions and policies.
The first version of ExcoTrack was launched in mid-July 2013, although it was still in its developmental stages. The initial cost for the development and design of, and training for, ExcoTrack was XCD 22,000.00 (around USD 8,100.00).
The entrepreneurs said that over the past seven years, the government’s contribution to include the initial grant, feature request charges, hosting, maintenance and fees amount to approximately $31,000.00 USD with 24/7 service. Part of accessing the grant required Daley to set up a company in order to access the grant, to which he invited Valechha to be a partner. Hence Rovika was born. In 2015, Rovika also successfully was awarded another grant to develop a new web-based vehicle and drivers licensing system with the ICT grant. However, the Government has not implemented its use, as it is awaiting legislative changes.
“The initial grant funding enabled by a verbal agreement with the Government ensured that ExcoTrack would not be given at a per-user rate and no limits would have been placed on the number of users on the system. Additionally, a minimum standard charge which at the time covered hosting and training with basic maintenance was set out. This at the time was in excess of $6000.00 XCD per year. It was also agreed that any future changes required would be charged to the Government, once it was outside of the original development or scheduled updates,” explained the entrepreneur.
However in 2018, Rovika Inc. moved to a Software as a Service (SaaS) licence structure which requires clients to purchase a licence as per industry practices. Rovika submitted a new agreement to the GoM, and the GoM refused to pay for the licensing claiming that with the amounts previously paid and the grants provided to the company, they should rightfully own the software. This disagreement led to the limitation of access to the software which subsequently led to a legal battle for access and ownership, whilst the company continues to provide service.
In the Rovika case, The legal and contractual issues were as follows:
Contractual arrangements were verbal. The then Cabinet Secretary procured the services of the Programmer, Mr. Daley as an Independent contractor without a written agreement. As an independent contractor, Mr. Daley developed a very secure, robust, application software that is user-friendly and accessible from any electronic device that has access to the Internet, and/or from any data-enabled device.
Lack of IT Policy. The Office of the Premier, did not make any IT policy provisions to ensure continuance of service if the person(s) and/or entity maintaining the application software should leave, fold, or have their services terminated; or in the event of security breaches or other mishaps.
Lack of Service Level Agreement (SLA). To date, the Office of the Premier does not have an established Service Level Agreement (SLA) with Rovika Inc.
Absence of proper procurement practices.The Cabinet and now the Office of the Premier did not put in place any procurement process whatsoever.
Lack of clarity on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is an estimate of the total costs of solutions (equipment, goods, and/or services) over the whole of their life. It includes the purchase price or initial fees and all of the other costs an organisation or business might incur, less any benefits received. Many times, organisations never think about ongoing costs of maintaining a service or license fees. This lack of clarity and understanding of the scope of ongoing service fees, have sent a lot of great innovations to the graveyard. Especially in the Public Sector, the tension between annual budgeting cycles makes it difficult for them to participate in Software as a Service solutions with fluctuating annual budgets.
These two case studies provide some critical insights on the flawed and procurement processes in the region which could thwart real efforts for young startups to launch and thrive.
Is intellectual property adequate protection?
Without appropriate protection, a firm’s innovation effort can be diluted if there is a serious threat of imitation. Especially in the open innovation context, knowledge is transmitted in a way that even tacit knowledge can spill over to the open innovation partner – as open innovation aims at sharing tacit knowledge and IP which are inherent to the partners themselves. Consequently, appropriating the rents from IP and knowledge put into the open innovation partnership may be difficult as imitation may occur.
In the case of the first case study, in promoting a technology such as “blockchain” that fosters greater transparency, it is quite ironic that corporate governance standards are currently not being applied to assess potential competitive risks. Secondly, in a global space where the number of patent applications filed for blockchain and adjacent technologies has also grown, the IP framework and support in the region is weak and uncoordinated at best, and on top of that, there are additional hurdles in obtaining patents specifically for blockchain innovations. Perhaps this too can be a decentralised challenge. On the one hand, from an operational standpoint, it’s left to be seen the tensions between decentralised and centralised systems and the effectiveness of a patent. Lastly, blockchain innovations may not be truly patented given that algorithms or computer coding on their own are often considered non-patentable abstract ideas, unless it has unique and associated hardware components, and/or unique processes that enable the technology to function.
Therefore, the very mechanism for protection and unfair advantage in this context lies in the execution and business model innovation of the startup. In a region that already has access to finance challenges, it is important that ecosystem enablers provide a level playing field to foster trust through implementing proper governance processes.
The need for clear rules for open innovation
In spite of the potential risks, as with any new process, open innovation and innovation procurement requires a different management approach, and involves insights from actors that fall outside of traditional supply chains, or in the context of organisations, outside the traditional networks, such as innovators. It requires clear rules and expectations to guide the process. These rules aren’t just useful for the problem owners and problem solvers participating, but they also help establish a more predictable expectation of the process, not to mention, build trust.
Outside of articulating the problem or question at hand, incentives, and logistics of the challenge, these rules should set out very clearly the following:
Establish clear objectives and goals: Recognising that there are many models of open innovation expression, from Innovation challenges, startup-corporate partnerships, startup incubator / accelerator, tech studios, business acquisition, co-creation labs, co-working and co-living spaces, Intrapreneurship and hackathons, it is extremely important to set out the objectives and goals of the proposed alliance and select an appropriate model that fits the criteria.
Intellectual property expectations:You need to set out who will own the intellectual property if your company decides to adopt an innovation as the result of open innovation. This is crucial to give participants confidence in the process.
Risk management and compliance: As value seeking companies adopt open innovation as a competitive strategy, it is also clear that this strategy is also accompanied by risk and rent-seeking behaviour. However, risk management seems to have been overlooked by many open innovation networks. It is important for organisations, public, private or international, to consider risk management as part of their process to safeguard innovators. In an era where the region has suffered significantly from reputational risks due to OECD/FATF (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/Financial Action Task Force) recommendations for weak regulatory compliance and anti money laundering regime, it’s important that even donors should adhere to basic corporate governance due diligence practices to avoid unintended consequences, not to mention the negative impacts of their brand.
Data protection: While the region might not necessarily have a regional harmonised framework for data protection, it should be best practice for open innovation networks to safeguard innovators data. Proper data protection policies and cyber security disclosures are necessary.
Access to Catalytic First-Loss Capital
While we recognise some risks, beyond innovation opportunities: digital transformation, learning by doing, etc.… the benefits of open innovation challenges are countless and far outweigh the risks to open innovation.
For startups especially, this is definitely a go-to mechanism to access first-loss catalytic capital. Let’s face it, unless you have sufficiently de-risked your business and proven the market, investors would not come running because it’s a high risk game – but you do need resources to prove them otherwise.
Just understand this principle, as a company, you may have less control over your projects and ideas once it’s picked up by other companies, or can even find their way to new markets via other parties. Therefore, if you’re developing a sensitive or commercially valuable product, requiring a patent for an unreleased product – then open innovation might not be appropriate for you, as it could result in a loss of intellectual property.
As an ecosystem enabler, just be mindful that open innovation takes a lot of time and effort to get right. Not only do you need to set clear rules for the process, but you also need to dedicate the time and resources necessary to oversee the process and manage public interactions. This can be tricky.
The landscape is changing. It is clear that innovation procurement promises to shape the future of the Caribbean, helping the region fast forward its trajectory towards an inclusive Digital, Green, Blue, and Orange Economy.
Telly Valerie Onu is the Managing Director, Quintessence Consulting, DBA QGlobal, and the Co-CEO, and Chief of Governance of Beyond Capital Markets.
Telly is an experienced Digital Economist, Global Strategist, Management and Development Specialist, with a passion in industry and enterprise transformation. Telly is also an International Speaker, Blockchain advocate, Impact and Fintech Innovator, venture ecosystem builder, and a member of the working group on the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) Payment System and Financial Innovation.
-$6.4m overpaid on incomplete nurses hostel at Mahdia
Construction of the Itabac Primary School in Region Eight remains incomplete with the site abandoned while overpayments amounting to $6.4 million were made for the construction of a nurses hostel in Mahdia which is still to be completed, according to the Auditor General’s report for the 2018 fiscal year.
In the report, Auditor General (AG) Deodat Sharma noted that the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) had awarded a contract in the sum of $18.978 million for the construction of the school. As at 31 December 2018, the entire sum was paid to the contractor.
However, physical verification conducted on 16 July 2019 revealed that the works were incomplete and the site was abandoned. Further, based on the measurements and calculations of the completed works, an overpayment of $258,160 was found for additional plumbing works not done, the report said.
It noted too that the region had not presented for audit scrutiny the advance payment or performance bond. It was also discovered that the contractor was paid $100,000 for insurance but none of these documents were seen by the auditors. In addition, the sum of $50,000 was paid for testing of materials but the test results were not presented.
In its response, the region indicated that the sum overpaid will be recovered.
The Audit Office recommended that the regional administration locate the documents for the performance bond, insurance and testing of materials, recover the overpayments and ensure that completed works are accurately measured and quantified before payments are made to contractors for works completed.
Hostel
Meantime, the AG’s report noted that a $11.816 million contract was awarded for the construction of a nurses hostel in Mahdia. The contract was signed on 20 June 2018 with a duration of six months for completion. As at 31 December 2018, the entire sum was paid to the contractor.
Physical verification conducted on 17 July 2019, however, revealed that the works were still in progress and the contractor only had four workers onsite. Based on measurements and calculations of the completed works, overpayments amounting to $6.409 million were also discovered.
The report noted that no details regarding the tendering and award of this contract were presented for audit examination. Further, the defects liability period could not be determined from the documents examined.
It was highlighted that the contract duration expired since 2018 and the works are still incomplete. Approvals for extension of time or reasons for the delayed completion of works were not presented for audit examination. The report noted that the contractor was paid $50,000 for insurance but no insurance was presented. In addition, the sum of $50,000 was paid for the testing of materials but the results were not presented for verification.
In its response, the region said that the contractor has since restarted the works and the roof was completed.
The Audit Office recommended that the regional administration locate the documents for the insurance and testing of materials and ensure that completed works are accurately measured and quantified before payments are made to contractors.
Kato dormitory
The AG’s report also highlighted that the Regional Tender Board awarded a contract for the construction of a kitchen at the Kato dormitory via the sole sourcing method of procurement in the sum of $7.9 million. No justification was presented regarding the sole sourcing of this project. As at 31 December 2018, the entire sum was paid to the contractor. However, the signed contract agreement was not presented while the duration and the defects liability period for the works could not be determined from the documents examined. In addition, physical verification conducted on 14 July 2019 revealed that there was an overpayment of $276,000 for the supply and installation of a three-burner industrial gas cooker.
In its response, the region said that the Tender Board Minutes were deficient and did not record the other bidders. In addition, the industrial gas cooker is yet to be delivered.
The Audit Office recommended that the regional administration ensure all Tender Board Minutes are accurately recorded and complete, recover the overpayments and ensure that completed work are accurately measured and quantified before payments are made to contractors.
Meanwhile, the AG’s report noted that the Regional Tender Board awarded a contract for the construction of a road to Muruwa to the lowest of five bidders in the sum of $12.8 million. As at 31 December 2018, amounts totalling $14.615 million were paid to the contractor, a difference of $1.814 million between the contract sum and the total payments.
