Negotiations between the Department of Passports (DoP) and IDEMIA, the French firm that has been providing passports to Nepal from 2010 to earlier this year, are in the final stages of negotiations to procure stopgap passports. This comes as the current stock dwindles and the new contract for biometric passports awarded to German firms Veridos and Muehlbauer will only take effect from mid-March next year.

The DoP has also not closed talks with Veridos, which, along with IDEMIA, is being approached to supply conventional machine readable passports (MRP) to cover the shortfall until new biometric passports are delivered.

After intervention by Prime Minister Sushila Karki, who also oversees the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the ministry and the DoP started negotiations with both outgoing and incoming suppliers to ensure a stopgap supply from December to March.

Currently, the stock of ordinary passports with the DoP has fallen below 170,000. As a result, the department has drastically reduced the number of applications it accepts. Earlier it used to get 6,000 applications daily, but now it has been cut to 1,000.

Prime Minister Karki held separate meetings with German ambassador Udo Volz and the Group CEO of IDEMIA Antione Grenier in the past 15 days in order to secure the passports, according to aides to the prime minister.

“We are in the final stage of the deal,” said Tirtha Aryal, the DoP director general. “We have yet to finalise from where we can manage the passports.” He said discussions with both German and French suppliers continue, but no decision has been taken yet.

Officials admit that it would be easy to procure stopgap passports from IDEMIA, the old supplier, as there would be no need for technical adjustments. But, as requested, Veridos has assured to provide MRPs, which would require a technical transition from the current e-passports (biometric).

“Our first priority is to procure additional passports from IDEMIA as we don’t need technical adjustments for just a few months,” said Aryal.

Veridos has offered to provide passports for $8.5 per copy. Officials at the foreign ministry and DoP said that 300,000 passports would be needed to meet the stopgap requirement, which either IDEMIA or Veridos could supply.

However, due to differences over price and quantity, the DoP had stalled negotiations with IDEMIA, said one official at the Prime Minister’s Office. During talks between the prime minister and IDEMIA CEO Grenier, there was a tentative agreement to procure one million passports through a variation order.

In the meeting, Grenier indicated that the two German firms would likely be unable to meet the March deadline to deliver the first batch of passports to Nepal as per the contract.

“As the German firms will be unable to deliver the passports until September, you need a contingency plan,” he told the prime minister, according to the official. “To cover the requirement until March, you should procure 600,000 passports for the stopgap and another 600,000 as a contingency through September,” the official quoting Grenier told the Post.

Senior officials at foreign ministry and the DoP, however, expressed reservations over Grenier’s proposal, arguing that since the German companies will begin deliveries in March as per the contract, there is no need to buy more than 500,000 passports.

During the meeting, IDEMIA CEO also raised concerns about unfair treatment in the recent passport procurement deal, and said several procurement laws and provisions were violated while awarding the contract to the German firms. As a goodwill gesture, the IDEMIA CEO announced that his firm would provide additional 60,000 passports to Nepal free of charge.

“We hope negotiations between the foreign ministry, DoP and IDEMIA will conclude by Thursday,” said Ajaya Bhadra Khanal, the chief advisor to the prime minister.

If the deal fails, negotiations with the German firm will resume, according to officials.

Regarding IDEMIA’s complaints of unfair treatment, the government has assured that it will review tender documents submitted by all firms that participated in the passport bid, which closed in August.

The DoP awarded the contract for execution of eMRTDS system including pre-enrolment, enrolment, data management and delivery system (package I) to Muehlbauer ID Service GmbH at the bid price of Rs1,550,814,325.81 equivalent to $11,154,834.41 plus Rs738, 536.20 as the substantially responsive lowest evaluated bid.

The second contract, for execution of eMRTDS booklets including personalisation, quality control, and packing system (package II), was awarded to Veridos at the bid price of Rs6,113,827,370.14 equivalent to 41,029,978.53 euros plus Rs161,608,384.79 as corrected and modified as the substantially responsive lowest evaluated bid.

With this, IDEMIA’s 15-year dominance as Nepal’s passport supplier came to an end.

The IDEMIA CEO, during the meeting with the prime minister, pushed his case claiming that his company has provided passports at cheapest rates to many countries and was ready to supply to Nepal at the same old price, provided that Nepal buys at least 1.2 million copies to meet the stopgap and contingency requirements till September.

“The deal is currently stuck because foreign ministry officials do not want to procure more than half a million passports, which IDEMIA has rejected,” said the official at the Prime Minister’s Office.

But the prime minister is willing to buy a million passports through a variation order if IDEIMA delivers passports at the same price as before ($10.31 per copy including pre-enrolment, enrolment, data management and delivery system).

“We don’t need one million passports. IDEMIA should understand our limitations,” Aryal told the Post, stating that buying more than needed will invite controversy. The Office of Auditor General has been raising the issue of passport procurement through the variation order.