The award of contracts by ANGTI within the framework of the Educational Sector Investment Project (Pisa), funded by the French Development Agency (AFD), is considered doubtful by certain Gabonese bidders who are probably rejected in favor of the sole Asian companies, including two Chinese, and to the detriment of the Community preference encouraged by the Public Procurement Code.
Released to the public on June 12, the results of the international call for tenders launched on January 17, 2020 by the National Agency for Major Infrastructure Works (ANGTI) on behalf of the Ministry of National Education as part of the program Pisa is disputed. Local companies having tendered suspect arrangements made between the Gabonese authorities and the Asian companies having won all of the five contracts offered. In any case, this is the conviction of Faco Construction, the construction company to which we owe, among others, the University Hospital of Owendo and in a few months the new French Embassy in Gabon.
In a letter sent on June 20 to Bogdan Sgarcitu, the Director General of ANGTI, the boss of Faco Construction indeed mentions “negligence and illegal practices and not in accordance with the rules in force”, in public procurement The Republic of Gabon. Jean-Pierre Grelon is particularly surprised that the five lots have all been awarded to foreign companies and Asian companies in particular.
Among these, there is the Chinese China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC), which had been fouled in the project relating to the rehabilitation of the PK12-PK105 road axis for non-compliance with contractual clauses after having demanded of the Gabonese State the discharge of its debt related to the construction of the Palace of sports of Libreville and the rehabilitation of the Embassy of Gabon in China. This company obtained lots 1 and 2, with a total value of more than 8.5 billion CFA francs.
Like the CSCEC, the Building Construction Company Ltd (BCC), a Saudi company, was also awarded two lots (n ° 3 and n ° 5), for more than 3 billion CFA francs. The remaining lot was awarded to Atricom for more than 2.6 billion CFA francs.
According to Jean-Pierre Grelon, whose company has bid for three lots without obtaining any, the award of these contracts did not take into account the practice of community preference explicitly encouraged by the Public Procurement Code in force in Gabon, which makes local businesses a priority. Better still, the ANGTI has, it seems, omitted that the vocation of AFD, sole donor in the framework of the Pisa project, is to “favor the development of Gabon and therefore its economy through companies local ”, recalls the boss of Faco Construction in his letter that Gabonreview consulted.
The “series of irregularities” noted by Jean-Pierre Grelon also concerns the fact that the CSCEC company was selected for the execution of lot n ° 2, while the opening report prepared by ANGTI and transmitted on March 17, 2020, shows that on the official deadline for submission and examination of tenders, this Chinese company had not submitted an offer for this lot. “There is, therefore, a serious violation of the procedure,” the Managing Director of Faco Construction lamented.
