After receiving responses from eight distributors to its global Expression of Interest (EOI) for the procurement of 1 crore doses of Covid-19, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) has once again extended the deadline for the bid. Citing that the proposals of the newly received responses are incomplete and the corporation has asked for more documentation, the Mumbai civic body on Tuesday extended the deadline from May 25 to June 1, 2021.
At a time when many other states are still struggling to get responses to the Global Expression of interests to procure vaccines from the international market, BMC has managed to get responses from eight bidders.
The BMC has planned to procure 10 million vaccine doses from the international market to speed up the vaccination drive in the city. For this, it had issued a global Expression of Interest (EoI) on May 12, 2021. The last date for participation in the tender floated for procurement of the Covid-19 vaccine from the international market was May 18. Subsequently, responses/bids from 5 potential supplier proposals were received by May 18, 2021, however, due to issues pertaining to incomplete documentation from the manufacturers/distributors the deadline was extended to May 25 by the civic body on May 18. On Tuesday, the last day of the bid, the civic body received three more responses, the same has once again been extended to June 1.
Confirming the development BMC chief Iqbal Singh Chahal on Tuesday said: “We have extended the last date of participation by another week. This has been done to enable the various bidders to submit a complete set of documents in support of the bids as prescribed under BMC's global EOI. Besides we will also entertain more responses/bids that we may receive during this one week of the extension period."
While Seven of the eight bidders have come forward with a proposal to supply Russian-made covid19 vaccines Sputnik of these six are sputnik V and one is Sputnik lite. The eighth supplier has submitted a proposal to supply doses of Pfizer as well as Astra Zeneca.
