December 1: The Supreme Court has issued an interim order to halt the tender process called by the Inland  Revenue Department to print excise duty stickers.

A single bench of Justice Tej Bahadur KC issued the order responding on a writ petition filed by Mohan Raj Ghimire on behalf of Miraj Printing.

The apex court order has put on hold the tender process called by the IRD on October 14 seeking international bids for printing the stickers. The department had called for international companies to submit their proposals within November 29.

Ghimire had filed the petition stating that the IRD issued the tender by including clauses which Nepali companies could not fulfill, and therefore the decision was biased. The Supreme Court stated that even the Public Procurement Act has a provision under which tender bids called by government should be favourable for the local companies. The court demanded written explanation from the IRD within 15 days.

The interim order says that the tender issued by IRD on October 14 has nothing new except one clause which says interested companies should have Intergraph or ISO certificate 14298 instead of Intergraph or ISO certificate 14289, and therefore the tender contradicts the precedent set by the SC on February 24, 2020. In this context, the Supreme Court has ordered the IRD not to move ahead with any of the process related to printing the excise duty stickers until the final decision is taken.

Nepali companies argue that the tender favours foreign companies and that the local contractors don’t stand a chance to land the contract as per the criteria fixed in the tender.

Last year, the Supreme Court had ordered the government to launch a study on the capacity of Nepali companies to render their services and to create an environment in which the domestic companies could prove their competitiveness so that the government could promote and protect the local companies in order to make the country’s economy strong and self reliant.