Guidance on approving contractor selection plan for a project in Vietnam

Guidance on approving contractor selection plan for a project in Vietnam (Internet image) 

Regarding this matter, LawNet would like to answer as follows:

1. Guidance on approving contractor selection plan for a project in Vietnam

Article 40 of the Law on Bidding 2023 stipulates the approval of contractor selection plan for a project in Vietnam as follows:

* An application for approval of the contractor selection plan includes the following contents:

- Completed tasks, including tasks related to project preparation and packages to be executed in advance with corresponding value and legal grounds thereof;

- Tasks to which neither of the prescribed contractor selection methods can apply;

- Tasks included in the contractor selection plan, including tasks and corresponding values constituting the packages to which one of the contractor selection methods specified in Articles 21 through 29 of the Law on Bidding 2023 is applied;

- Tasks which cannot be included in the contractor selection plan (if any), specific tasks and their values must be specified;

- Total value of the tasks stated in Points a, b, c and d of Clause 1 of Article 40 of the Law on Bidding 2023. This total value must not exceed the total investment of the project;

- Other related contents.

* Power to approve the contractor selection plan:

- The employer shall organize preparation and approval of the contractor selection plan in case the contractor selection master plan has been approved;

- The competent person shall consider approving the contractor selection plan for a project which is not covered by the contractor selection master plan or authorize the employer or his/her subordinate to do so, except the case specified in Point c of Clause 2 of Article 40 of the Law on Bidding 2023;

- The employer or the head of the unit tasked with preparing the project, if the project employer is not yet identified, shall consider approving the contractor selection plan for the package for which the bidding is conducted in advance as prescribed in Article 42 of the Law on Bidding 2023 or which needs to be executed before the project is approved.

* Before approving a contractor selection plan, the person that has the power to give approval as prescribed in Clause 2 of Article 42 of the Law on Bidding 2023 shall organize the appraisal of the contents in Article 39 of the Law on Bidding 2023.

2. Rules for preparing contractor selection plan in Vietnam

According to Article 37 of the Law on Bidding 2023, the rules for preparing contractor selection plan in Vietnam are as follows:

- A contractor selection plan shall cover the entire project or procurement cost estimate. In case of a procurement cost estimate, the contractor selection plan may be prepared on the basis of the procurement cost estimate of the current budget year and expected procurement cost estimates of the following budget years. If there are not sufficient grounds for preparing a contractor selection plan for the entire project or procurement cost estimate, the contractor selection plan shall be prepared for one or some packages.

- If a package is to be executed within duration of exceeding 01 year, the contractor selection plan must clearly indicate the package execution duration and the package’s price determined for the entire execution duration.

- The number of packages and contents of each package must be specified in the contractor selection plan.

- Approval of the contractor selection plan shall be given on the basis of technical properties and execution process, and in a manner that ensures the uniformity of the project or procurement cost estimate, and must be conformable with the approved contractor selection master plan (if any).

- The contractor selection plan may be prepared after the procurement cost estimate or the project has been approved, or as the same time as the project or the procurement cost estimate, or before the project approval decision has been issued in case the package needs to be executed before the project is approved.

To Quoc Trinh

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