MyProcurement amends RM6.5b army contract to RM6.5m

DAP MP Tony Pua had yesterday in Parliament raised doubts over the three-year contract to supply army rations in Penang, Kedah and Perlis, which was awarded to Syarikat Era Frozen Sdn Bhd.He expressed dissatisfaction over the information available on the portal and said he believed that the size of the contract was unusual and probably due to a mistake in the data.

By Lee Wei Lian

KUALA LUMPUR, April 6 — The RM6.5 billion contract to supply fresh rations to the armed forces in three northern states that was listed on the government’s new tender portal has now been amended to RM6.5 million after it was questioned by an opposition MP.
Checks on the MyProcurementwebsite  this afternoon showed that the value of the tender awarded has been amended to RM6,474,138.37.
“While the value of the contract for food items would certainly raise eyebrows, I’d like to believe that there are some decimal point errors,” Pua told a press conference yesterday.
“There are at least 38 awards amounting to RM182 million where there was no company name or company number provided. The question is how many other errors are there in the data? Hence without accurate and credible information, the MyProcurement portal will be of little use to the public.”
According to a story in The Sun newspaper today, a Finance Ministry official had admitted yesterday that the figure provided by the Defence Ministry was wrong.
While the error in the contract awarded to Era Frozen has now been corrected, it is unclear what steps are being taken to ensure that there are no other data integrity issues remaining in MyProcurement.
Attempts to reach the person in charge of MyProcurement were unsuccessful as at press time. Other Finance Ministry spokespeople contacted declined to comment.
The MyProcurement portal is part of the Najib administration’s attempts to introduce greater transparency in government tenders as part of its efforts to reform the economy and make it more competitive.
While the move was lauded as a good first step, it has also come under criticism for its lack of details such as tender specifications and has been compared unfavourably to the Singapore government’s tenderportal