Swazi Observer

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E4.5 MILLION PSPF INVESTMENT CONSULTANCY TENDER RESTART

By SIFISO NHLABATSI | 2023-03-27

The Public Service Pensions Fund (PSPF) has been ordered to start afresh a tender process for Investment Consultancy Services after it awarded the E4.5 million tender to a company that was considered non-responsive.

The Independent Review Committee (IRC) which was seized with the matter indicated that what was done by the PSPF was tantamount to accepting a late tender through the back door.

The applicant in the matter was Eswatini Employee Benefit Consultants (Pty) Ltd (EEBC), the PSPF is the first respondent while Riscura Solutions Eswatini (Pty) Ltd (RISCURA), which was awarded the tender in question, is the second respondent.

The matter was before IRC, led by Lucky Manyatsi as the Chairman.
Eswatini Employee Benefit Consultants were aggrieved by the administrative decision taken by the Public Service Pensions Fund (PSPF) to award tender No.1/ 2020 titled;- ‘Investment Consultancy Services’ to Riscura Solutions Eswatini.

According to the documents presented before the IRC, following a publication that was placed in a local print media on November 15, 2022 of an intention by PSPF to award the tender to RISCURA, EEBC launched an internal review application with the controlling officer of PSPF, to set aside the decision to award the tender. This was done in adherence to section 48 of the Act.

This section 48 application by the applicant, EEBC was not successful. The refusal of the application became the spring-board of this present application
It was disclosed that following an evaluation exercise by EXCO, three tenderers were recommended to make presentation to the Investment Committee (IC) in November 2020.

recommended
These were EEBC partnering with Alexander Forbes, Orange Partners and Novare (ORANGE) as well as Imbewu Yesive. ORANGE was eventually recommended by the IC to be awarded the tender. It was stated that before ORANGE could be awarded, allegations of professional misconduct against them popped up.

This resulted in the award of the tender being put in abeyance pending an investigation on the allegations levelled against ORANGE. ORANGE was subsequently cleared of the allegations of professional misconduct that were levelled against them.

“However, PSPF took a decision to cancel the decision to award the tender due to the extended period of time it had taken to finalise the investigations. Henceforth the decision to award it to ORANGE was cancelled and this was communicated to the other tenderers.

In November of 2021 fresh letters of invitation to tender were issued to all the initial tenderers to re-tender for Tender No.1/2020, save for Tenderer namely Balondolozi Investments Services, who was since conflicted in applying for the tender,” it was stated.

According to papers brought before the IRC, the applicants in the re-tendering process pitched for presentation and were assessed and evaluated by EXCO.

assessment
They were assessed on both technical and financial aspects of the tender. The technical aspect amounted to 70 per cent overall scoring while the financial aspect amounted to 30 per cent score. In terms of the total weighted scores (both technical and financial scores) EEBC, partnering with Alexander Forbes came up tops with a total score of 85.5 per cent followed by ORANGE with 70.9 per cent.

“On third position was RISCURA with a total weighted score of 63.9 per cent. EEBC was ranked on second position on the technical assessment attaining 79.3 per cent,” part of the argument reads.

It was stated that the top three tenderers on the total weighted scores were shortlisted for interview by IC. According to IRC, in assessing the tenderers the IC considered the technical assessment and thus recommended RISCURA and the other two tenderers for negotiations on the financial proposals. Finally the IC recommended the appointment of RISCURA as the successful tenderer for the tender project.

This recommendation was adopted by the board of PSPF which resolved to appoint RISCURA as an Investment (Consultant) Advisor for both its foreign and domestic portfolios for a three year period. A notice of intention to award the tender to the RISCURA was published on November 14, 2022. It is apposite to highlight that this notice published only the technical evaluation scores of the tenderers and not the total weighted scores.

The initial grounds up on which the review application was founded were three. These being nationality of EEBC, cancellation of the initial tender by PSPF in September 2021 and the pricing of EEBC's tender.

An application by EEBC to supplement the review grounds was filed before the committee on February 23. EEBC sought to introduce new grounds of review, namely; non- compliance with the Public Procurement Regulations 2020 (Regulations) failure by PSPF to adhere to the total weighted scores in awarding the tender to RISCURA.

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