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NATCOM Consortium has paid the outstanding $176,575,700 as the 70 per cent remainder of the $252,521,000 bid price for NITEL and MTEL’s acquisition after an earlier $75,756,300 deposit, a 30% down payment the firm made in January.
NATCOM had until Tuesday, April 7, 2015 to clear the balance after the acquisition was approved by the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) on February 27, 2012.
Under the guided liquidation strategy, all the core assets and business undertaking of NITEL and MTEL were to be sold as a single or multiple lots to a qualified bidder by the Liquidator under the general guidance of the National Council on Privatisation.
Thus, the bidder that acquires the assets of NITEL and MTEL will pledge to continue to operate the assets to provide telecoms services. This is as against the traditional liquidation of an enterprise by asset stripping.
Consequently, advertisements for submission of Expressions of Interest (EOIs) from prospective bidders for the acquisition of the assets and business undertaking of NITEL and MTEL were placed in both local and international print media by the Liquidator. At the closing date on June 30, 2014, 17 organizations/consortium submitted EOIs; and only two satisfactorily met the stipulated criteria for pre-qualification.
On September 18, 2014, the two successful applicants, NATCOM Consortium and NETTAG Consortium, that met the minimum pass mark of 75% were pre-qualified and issued the Request for Proposals (RFP) and allowed to proceed to data room and physical due diligence stage prior to preparation and submission of their technical and financial proposals.
The deadline for submission of technical and financial bids was Friday, November 7, 2014. The two pre-qualified bidders, NATCOM Consortium and NETTAG Consortium, submitted their technical and financial bids before the expiry of the deadline. The technical bids received from the two bidders were evaluated.
Unfortunately, one of the two pre-qualified bidders, NETTAG Consortium, was disqualified for failure to enclose a bid bond as clearly stipulated in the RFP.
Following the disqualification of NETTAG Consortium, only the financial bid of NATCOM Consortium qualified for opening on December 3, 2014; having scored an average of 92% in its technical proposal which was above the minimum pass mark of 75%, and satisfied the requirement of a valid bid bond.
Accordingly, the financial proposal of NATCOM Consortium was publicly opened on Wednesday, December 3, 2014 which it won with a bid price of $252.25m.
