According to the National Identity Card Management Center of the ministry, evaluation process of these firms will begin from Thursday that will take at least one month to complete.

Center said that  Gmalto of (France), IRIS Corporation (Malaysia), Safran Morpho (France), Informatics (Sri Lanka), Dermalaog and Arjowiggins of France have submitted bids. On June 1, the NIDMC, under the Home Ministry had called a global tender for procurement and installation of hardware equipment in National Identity Management Center office and all project sites and provide services. A total 47 prospect bidders have purchased the bid document but only six have submitted the final bid.

The winner of the tender has to complete the work by 18 months where the firm has to procure and customise software for National Identity System; deploy hybrid database for a nationwide National Identity Management System, procurement of National Identity smartcards and procurement, installation and operation of e-services for National Identity Management System.

The centre said two bid documents for each technical and financial proposal will be open once the evaluation of the technical bid is completed. According to the bid document, 80 percent of the points have been allocated for technical evaluation while 20 marks are for financial competence of the company.

The proposed ID aims to replace the existing citizenship card and will have personal information such as family name, first name, address, father’s name, mother’s name, photo and four fingerprints of both thumbs and two index fingers.

The winner has to issue 110,000 cards as a pilot project. The Asian Development Bank has extended loan of US $ 8 million for the project, and the rest will be financed by the World Bank.

The bid was cancelled last year after ADB found a conflict of interest between two international firms, which were selected for the final financial evaluation, and the consultant, who prepared the tender document of the entire project.

This time too several changes were made after pre-bid meeting was held last month.  After several bidders raised questions, the NIDMC has furnished 222 replies of the prospect bidders during the pre-bid meeting and made some changes.