Influential notes still hover around bids

Influential notes still hover around bids

JAKARTA (JP): Personal memorandums aimed at influencing
selection in tenders are still widespread, a leader of the
Association of Indonesian Builders said.

Daniel Hutapea, leader of the association's city branch, said
yesterday these memorandums, known as surat sakti (powerful
memos) come from high ranking officials in the government,
political parties and mass organizations.

Daniel asked that all project officers submit these
memorandums to the association, who would make them public.

"When we visited a number of city agencies we found there are
still many memorandums which influence the bidding process for
municipality projects," Daniel said after submitting a list of
contractors to the Central Jakarta mayoralty and the city's fire
department.

The Antara news agency quoted Daniel as saying that the fire
department is one of the city agencies which receives many of
these memorandums.

Daniel also urged project officers to be courageous in
rejecting the requests made in these memorandums. Parties which
should be rejected are also those which do not have association
membership cards, he said.

Based on a gubernatorial instruction, all bidding participants
must be members of the association to ease control over builders
who breach contracts.

Daniel said the association had reached an agreement with the
city tax office on overcoming the problem of lost accounts.

He said most builders' employees are contract-based instead of
regular workers, which might partially be why the accounts get
lost.

To overcome this problem the city tax office and the
association agreed on a 1.5 percent tax cut from the total
project value, without the prior inspection of accounts by tax
officials.

This method is already applied by the tax office to real
estate developers, Daniel added. (anr)