Chinese company challenges award of Sh164bn Lamu coal plant tender
What you need to know:
- HCIG consortium has claimed that the ministry had unlawfully awarded the tender to a consortium which did not participate in the tender.
- It has in their application, urged the High Court to quash the award of the tender to Gulf Energy consortium.
- The consortium says that the process was marred with secrecy, lacked transparency, was biased and devoid of the basic tenets of fairness.
The High Court will on Monday hear an urgent application filed by a consortium of the HCIG Energy Investment Company of China and its local partners, Liketh Investment Kenya Ltd, challenging the award of the Sh164 billion coal plant tender in Lamu to a rival.
HCIG claimed that the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum had unlawfully awarded the tender to a consortium that did not participate in the tender.
The consortium, through lawyers Ndegwa Njiru and Simon Mburu, said out of the 26 entities that submitted their expression of interest (EOI) regarding the construction of the plant, only 10 passed the EOI stage.
However, the ministry proceeded to award the tender to the Gulf Energy consortium, which was not, as presently constituted, among the 10 pre-qualified bidders that were requested to submit their technical and financial proposals.
Lawyer Njiru explained that the ministry had acknowledged that by February 2014, they knew that the bid by the consortium of Cennergi Pty Ltd, Tata Power, Exarro Resources Ltd and Gulf Energy was grossly flawed, because Tata Power is the majority shareholder of Exarro Resources Ltd while at the same time Cennergi Pty Ltd is a subsidiary of Exarro Resources Ltd.
“Tata Power as an individual corporate entity had pre-qualified to bid for the tender in respect of the project while at the same time Tata Power was part of another consortium tendering for the same tender in respect of the project,” lawyer Njiru said in the court papers.
RECONSTITUTED EXISTING CONSORTIA
He said that in an attempt to remedy the anomaly, the ministry, at the instigation of Gulf Energy Ltd, which is one of the companies making up the Gulf Energy Consortium, purported to reconstitute existing consortia and introduce new corporate entities in the tendering process while withdrawing others.
“This was done to the eventual benefit of not only Gulf Energy as an individual company but also (for) the Gulf Energy Consortium,” lawyer Njiru.
Lawyer Mburu said that the Constitution enjoins the State and its organs to contract for goods and services in a manner that is fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost-effective.
The HCIG consortium has, in its application, urged the High Court to quash the award of the tender to the Gulf Energy consortium, arguing that the process was marred by secrecy, lacked transparency and was biased and devoid of the basic tenets of fairness.
The HCIG consortium has sued the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum, the public private partnerships (PPP) petitions committee, the Gulf Energy consortium and the Attorney-General.
