Vietnamese lose bids for state contracts to foreign companies While the State calls to use Vietnamese goods, state agencies refuse contractors that offer Vietnamese products.   Tran Thanh Trong, general director of Sang Ban Mai JSC (Sbmpower) in Binh Duong province, said his company has been disqualified from package deals funded by the state many times. The company manufactures industrial power generators. With the locally made content proportion of 20-40 percent, its products are 20-30 percent cheaper than imports of the same kind. In general, domestically made products are VND0.5-3 billion cheaper than imports. A Vietnamese 1000 KVA power generator, for example, is priced at VND2.8 billion, while an imported one is VND3.2 billion. While Vietnamese private companies prefer Sang Ban Mai’s products to imports, state-owned enterprises and state-funded projects refuse its products. Sbmpower lost bids for projects funded by the state three times and lost many other opportunities. The company has provided information about the bids to the Ministry of Planning and Investment’s Bidding Management  Agency. The investor of the project to install a medium-voltage power transmission line in Dong Nai province, when inviting for a bid in 2013, clearly announced that the machines must be sourced from Singapore, South Korea or Thailand. As a result, Sbmpower could not win the bid. The company also lost another bid in Vinh Long province, because the investor stated that synchronous-motor machines must be imports. At another bid, the investor announced that the equipment to be used for the project must be imports under the mode of complete built unit (CBU). Trong said that Sbmpower would not join the bids to be called by state-owned enterprises or state-funded projects, because it is sure of failure because of the discriminatory treatment. The package deals of supplying power generators to Dong Nai General Hospital and Power Construction and Installation Company No 1 are among eight package deals suffering from discriminatory treatment as reported by Sbmpower. An analyst noted that the investor set “strange” requirements. For example, it only accepted power generators manufactured by foreign companies which have strong brands and have been operating for more than 45 years. The analyst noted that in most cases Vietnamese companies cannot win the bids because the investors only accept imported products, or because the products offered by Vietnamese companies are not cheap enough. “Vietnamese products would be accepted only if they are ‘dirt cheap’, i.e. cheaper than imports by more than 40 percent,” he explained. “If they cannot save more than 40 percent of expenses, they would rather use expensive imports,” he said, adding that in Vietnamese thoughts, foreign-made products are always much better than domestically made ones. PL TPHCM