TIA.
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It’s a contract that didn’t go through the tender process — which basically means getting written bids.
For many companies and government entities the bidding process is required so that all bids can be compared and the best selected. An untendered contract was just given to someone bypassing that process, which usually means someone called in a favor of some type or some naughtiness may have occurred.
Tendering is a process where you invite people to tell you how much to do a piece of work , and usually the lowest bit wins – all else being equal.
If you don’t invite bids then there’s no real proof that the price being paid is about correct (could it have been done cheaper? – which is important if its public money)
Also, 20% of the price paid might be back handers to city officials to make sure the price is accepted – if no one is checking, no one knows (which is where the scandal comes in)
It means the contract was just handed to someone without comparing their offer with other potential offers. It means that you almost certainly haven’t got the best value for money. It usually means that the deal was corrupt to a greater or lesser extent – eg the contract went to a relative or friend or someone who paid a bribe.
A tender allows all companies a chance to compete for the contract. If it is untendered, instead of all companies having a chance, one company was selected. Why? We’re they the presidents son? Did they pay a bribe? What dodgy dealing was done to get the position?
The point of the tender process is that it is all above board, and it’s fair for everyone. When this process is circumvented, the suspicion is that someone got an unfair advantage, possibly through corruption.
Been a bit of a scandal here in Australia with our previous Federal Government.
Things would go out for a tender process. An independent body would rate which groups, companies, etc had the best bids. The government then almost every time went against that advice and gave it to people, companies, etc that hadn’t been part of the tender process, or had been discounted as useless by the process, and gave it to them instead.
Why?
Political donors, family and friends, etc. You had people, companies, etc that had never managed anything previously being given hundreds of millions of taxpayer money and then did nothing with it……… except I assume siphon off some of it.
In case there’s an issue of being divided by a common language here: in the USA, the term more often used is “no-bid” contract. Same meaning, different words.
Pre-corona, my Japanese school offered 3-week study abroad tours using a Japanese travel company to organize ticketing, reservations and other details. We were required by our admin to get multiple bids. However, we wanted to use one specific company that we had experience with and we knew would do a decent job at a good price. We would end up asking other companies to give us bids though we knew we didn’t want to use them. The bids were typically in the same ballpark, but we had to waste our time and the time of the other companies. The idea of having competing bids is nice, but for us it was just a pain.
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