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Servicios - 276185-2019

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14/06/2019    S113

Belgium-Brussels: Public Financial Management Support Programme II (PFM II)

2019/S 113-276185

Location — Asia/Pakistan

Service Contract Notice


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Please note that the awarding of the contract is subject to the condition of the prior conclusion of a financing agreement, which does not modify the elements of the procurement procedure (this will be the case, for instance, if the budget initially foreseen is different or if the timeframe, the nature or the condition of the implementation are altered). If the precedent condition is not met, the Contracting Authority will either abandon the procurement or cancel the award procedure without the candidates or tenderers being entitled to claim any compensation.
1.Publication reference
EuropeAid/140206/DH/SER/PK
2.Procedure
Restricted
3.Programme title
Public Financial Management Support Programme II (PFM II)
4.Financing
BGUE-B2019-21.020200-C1-DEVCO
5.Contracting Authority

European Union, represented by the European Commission on behalf of and for the account of the beneficiary country, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Brussels, BELGIUM

Clarifications may be sought from the Contracting Authority at the following email address DELEGATION-PAKISTAN-CFS@EEAS.EUROPA.EU at the latest 21 days before the deadline for submission of applications stated at the point 23 below.

Clarifications will be published on the website of DG International Cooperation and Development at the latest 5 days before the deadline.


Contract specification

6.Nature of contract
Fee-based
7.Contract description
The objective of the contract is to help improve inclusive service delivery through technical assistance to support the federal level as well as the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan to strengthen their public financial management as well as their federal, provincial and sector strategies. 3 outputs are targeted:
 Output 1: Enhanced capacities at the federal level in annual and multi-annual policy based budgeting, in planning public investments, in more predictable and controlled budget execution, in performance reporting systems including information on SDG and gender linked service delivery performance;
 Output 2: Enhanced capacities at the Sindh level in annual policy based budgeting, in more predictable and controlled budget execution, including strengthened cash plans and better internal controls, as well as a plan to limit arrears and in performance reporting systems including information on SDG and gender linked service delivery performance;
 Output 3: Enhanced capacities at the Balochistan level in annual budget planning, more predictable and controlled budget execution, including strengthened cash plans and better internal controls, in increased automated processes and better use of financial management systems and in performance reporting systems including information on SDG and gender linked service delivery performance.

Full description of the underlying Commission implementing decision is available on Europa website: https://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/sites/devco/files/aap-financing-pakistan-annex2- c 2019 3276 en.pdf

8.Number and titles of lots
One lot only
9.Maximum budget
12 700 000,00 EUR.
10.Scope for additional services
The Contracting Authority may, at its own discretion, extend the project in duration and/or scope subject to the availability of funding up to the estimated amount of approximately 50 % of the project budget. Any extension of the contract would be subject to satisfactory performance by the contractor.


Conditions of participation

11.Eligibility
Participation is open to all natural persons who are nationals of and legal persons (participating either individually or in a grouping — consortium — of tenderers) which are effectively established in a Member State of the European Union or in a eligible country or territory as defined under the Regulation (EU) No 236/2014 establishing common rules and procedures for the implementation of the Union's instruments for external action (CIR) for the applicable instrument under which the contract is financed (see also heading 29 below). Participation is also open to international organisations.
 Please be aware that after the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the EU, the rules of access to EU procurement procedures of economic operators established in third countries will apply to candidates or tenderers from the United Kingdom depending on the outcome of negotiations. In case such access is not provided by legal provisions in force at the time of contract award, candidates or tenderers from the United Kingdom could be rejected from the procurement procedure.
12.Candidature
All eligible natural and legal persons (as per item 11 above) or groupings of such persons (consortia) may apply.
 A consortium may be a permanent, legally-established grouping or a grouping which has been constituted informally for a specific tender procedure. All members of a consortium (i.e., the leader and all other members) are jointly and severally liable to the Contracting Authority.
 The participation of an ineligible natural or legal person (as per item 11) will result in the automatic exclusion of that person. In particular, if that ineligible person belongs to a consortium, the whole consortium will be excluded.
13.Number of applications
No more than one application can be submitted by a natural or legal person whatever the form of participation (as an individual legal entity or as leader or member of a consortium submitting an application). In the event that a natural or legal person submits more than one application, all applications in which that person has participated will be excluded.
14.Shortlist alliances prohibited
Any tenders received from tenderers comprising firms other than those mentioned in the shortlisted application forms will be excluded from this restricted tender procedure unless prior approval from the Contracting Authority has been obtained (see practical guide - PRAG - 2.6.3.). Short-listed candidates may not form alliances or subcontract to each other for the contract in question.
15.Grounds for exclusion
As part of the application form, candidates must submit a signed declaration, included in the standard application form, to the effect that they are not in any of the exclusion situations listed in Section 2.6.10.1. of the PRAG.
 Candidates included in the lists of EU restrictive measures (see Section 2.4. of the PRAG) at the moment of the award decision cannot be awarded the contract.
16.Sub-contracting
Subcontracting is allowed.
17.Number of candidates to be short-listed
On the basis of the applications received, between 4 and 8 candidates will be invited to submit detailed tenders for this contract. If the number of eligible candidates meeting the selection criteria is less than the minimum of 4, the Contracting Authority may invite the candidates who satisfy the criteria to submit a tender.


PROVISIONAL TIMETABLE

18.Provisional date of invitation to tender
9.8.2019
19.Provisional commencement date of the contract
15.1.2020
20.Initial period of implementation of tasks
60 months


Selection and award criteria

21.Selection criteria
By a consortium, these selection criteria will be applied to the consortium as a whole unless specified otherwise. The selection criteria will not be applied to natural persons and single- member companies when they are sub-contractors.
 1) Economic and financial capacity of candidate (based on item 3 of the application form). In case of candidate being a public body, equivalent information should be provided. The reference period which will be taken into account will be the last 3 years for which accounts have been closed.
 Criteria for legal and natural person:
 (i) the average annual turnover of the candidate must exceed the annualised maximum budget of the contract, or 2 540 000,00 EUR, i.e. the maximum budget stated in the Contract Notice (12 700 000,00 EUR) divided by the initial contract duration in years (5 years), where this exceeds 1 year; and
 (ii) current ratio (current assets/current liabilities) in the last year for which accounts have been closed must be at least 1. In case of a consortium this criterion must be fulfilled by each member.
 2) Professional capacity of candidate (based on items 4 and 5 of the application form). The reference period which will be taken into account will be the last 3 years from submission deadline.
 Criteria for legal and natural persons:
 (i) at least 10 staff work of have worked for the candidate in fields related to this contract in the last 3 years;
 (ii) at least 5 staff currently work for the candidate in fields related to this contract.
 3) Technical capacity of candidate (based on items 5 and 6 of the application form). The reference period which will be taken into account will be the last 3 years from submission deadline.
 Criteria for legal and natural persons:
 (i) the candidate has provided services under at least 1 contract each with a budget of at least that of this contract (12 700 000,00 EUR) in the fields of public financial management or public sector reform or local governance and decentralisation, which was implemented at any moment during the reference period of 3 years from submission deadline;
 (ii) the candidate has worked successfully on at least 3 projects covering at least 3 of the following areas: annual and multi-annual policy based budgeting, public investments planning, budget implementation and monitoring, efficiency and transparency of budget processes, cash planning and treasury management, service delivery performance reporting and result based management, public financial management regulations, development of large budget and accounting IT systems:
 (iii) the candidate has worked successfully on at least one project in Pakistan during the reference period of 3 years from submission deadline;
 Previous experience which caused breach of contract and termination by a Contracting Authority shall not be used as reference.
 An economic operator may, where appropriate and for a particular contract, rely on the capacities of other entities, regardless of the legal nature of the links which it has with them. Some examples of when it may not be considered appropriate by the Contracting Authority are when the tender rely in majority on the capacities of other entities or when they rely on key criteria. If the tenderer relies on other entities it must prove to the Contracting Authority that it will have at its disposal the resources necessary for performance of the contract, for example by producing a commitment on the part of those entities to place those resources at its disposal. Such entities, for instance the parent company of the economic operator, must respect the same rules of eligibility — notably that of nationality — and must comply with the selection criteria for which the economic operator relies on them. Furthermore, the data for this third entity for the relevant selection criterion should be included in the tender in a separate document. Proof of the capacity will also have to be furnished when requested by the Contracting Authority.
 With regard to technical and professional criteria, an economic operator may only rely on the capacities of other entities where the latter will perform the works or services for which these capacities are required.
 With regard to economic and financial criteria, the entities upon whose capacity the tenderer relies, become jointly and severally liable for the performance of the contract.
 If more than 8 eligible candidates meet the above selection criteria, the relative strengths and weaknesses of the applications of these candidates must be reexamined to identify the 8 best candidates. The only additional comparative criteria that will be taken into consideration during this re-examination, in the order that they appear below, are:
 1) The highest number of projects that meet criteria 3.(i);
 2) The highest cumulated value of all the project that meet criteria 3.(ii).
 N.B.: additional comparative criterion 2) will be applied only if the number of eligible candidates remains higher than 8 after applying additional comparative criterion 1).
22.Award criteria
Best price-quality ratio.


APPLICATION

23.Deadline for receipt of applications
The candidate attention is drawn to the fact that there are 2 different systems for sending applications: one is by post or private mail service, the other is by hand delivery.
 In the first case, the application must be sent before the date and time limit for submission, as evidenced by the postmark or deposit slip(1), but in the second case it is the acknowledgment of receipt given at the time of the delivery of the application that will serve as proof.
 12:30 p.m. Islamabad time on 16.7.2019.
 Any application sent to the Contracting Authority after this deadline will not be considered.
 The Contracting Authority may, for reasons of administrative efficiency, reject any application submitted on time to the postal service but received, for any reason beyond the Contracting Authority's control, after the effective date of approval of the short-list report, if accepting applications that were submitted on time but arrived late would considerably delay the evaluation procedure or jeopardise decisions already taken and notified.
 (1) It is recommended to use registered mail in case the postmark would not be readable.
24.Application format and details to be provided
Of which must be strictly observed. The application form is available from the following Internet address:

http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/prag/annexes.do?chapterTitleCode=B

The application must be accompanied by a declaration of honour on exclusion and selection criteria using the template available from the following Internet address: http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/prag/annexes.do?chapterTitleCode=A

Any additional documentation (brochure, letter, etc.) sent with an application will not be taken into consideration.
25.How applications may be submitted
Applications must be submitted in English exclusively to the Contracting Authority in a sealed envelope:
 — either by post or by courier service, in which case the evidence shall be constituted by the postmark or the date of the deposit slip, to:
 Delegation of the European Union, House 9, Street 88, Sector G-6/3, 44000 Islamabad, PAKISTAN,
 — or hand delivered by the candidate in person or by an agent directly to the premises of the Contracting Authority in return for a signed and dated receipt, in which case the evidence shall be constituted by this acknowledgement of receipt, to:
 Head of finance, contracts and audit phone: +92-51-227-1828
 Delegation of the European Union, House 9, Street 88, Sector G-6/3, 44000 Islamabad, PAKISTAN
 The opening hours of the Delegation of the European Union in Islamabad are from 8:00 to 17:15 (Mondays to Thursdays) and from 8:00 to 12:30 on Fridays. The Delegation is closed during the weekend and on official holidays.
 The contract title and the Publication reference (see item 1 above) must be clearly marked on the envelope containing the application and must always be mentioned in all subsequent correspondence with the Contracting Authority.
 Applications submitted by any other means will not be considered.
 By submitting an application candidates accept to receive notification of the outcome of the procedure by electronic means. Such notification shall be deemed to have been received on the date upon which the Contracting Authority sends it to the electronic address referred to in the application.
26.Alteration or withdrawal of applications
Candidates may alter or withdraw their applications by written notification prior to the deadline for submission of applications. No application may be altered after this deadline.
 Any such notification of alteration or withdrawal shall be prepared and submitted in accordance with Item 25. The outer envelope (and the relevant inner envelope if used) must be marked ‘Alteration’ or ‘Withdrawal’ as appropriate.
27.Operational language
All written communications for this tender procedure and contract must be in English.
28.Date of publication of prior information notice

26.3.2019 — notice number in OJ2019/S 060-137763

29.Legal basis(2)
Regulation (EC) No 1905/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18.12.2006 establishing a Financing Instrument for Development Cooperation (DCI — OJ L378/65 of 27.12.2006).
 (2)Please state any specificity that might have an impact on rules on participation (such as geographic or thematic or long/short term).
30.Additional information
Incidental expenditures, which covers for all current expenses incurred by the contractor not included in the fees, amounts to 1 200 000,00 EUR. Incidental expenditures will cover for security costs which the tenderer will have to estimate and indicate in their financial offer as amount of costs to reserve from incidental expenditures, and which he considers necessary to ensure the proper implementation of the contract during its whole duration.
 From the budget excluding Incidental expenditures (11 500 000,00 EUR), an amount of 3 000 000,00 EUR will be exclusively dedicated to cover for the fees of short-term expertise which the provincial and federal authorities will have to identify with involvement of the contracting parties as well as other relevant stakeholders, during monthly or quarterly project coordination meetings as government's needed expertise for the subsequent month or quarter. The ratio of 3 000 000,00 EUR between Federal and Provinces of Sindh and Balochistan is respectively 30, 35 and 35 % subject to fine-tuning during the project inception phase.