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17.05.2019
Latvijas Pasts categorically rejects the statements made by individual officials in the mass media that Latvijas Pasts allegedly “was unable to qualify” for the procurement requirements of the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs (OCMA) regarding the delivery of the European Parliament election notifications and emphasises that the quality and offer of the country’s largest postal service provider fully complied with the procurement requirements.
The long-standing experience of Latvijas Pasts in the delivery of a large number of items of national importance to residents throughout Latvia allows for the competent assessment of procurement regulations. Unfortunately, it has to be concluded that the emphasis in the mentioned procurement was placed on the lowest price principle, which not always corresponds to the amount of work and the required quality.
Based on its many years of experience, Latvijas Pasts in the OCMA procurement process repeatedly drew the attention of the customer to the fact that it would be necessary to tighten the quality requirements contained therein for the successful delivery of such a large number of items – more than one million letters – throughout the country. From the point of view of Latvijas Pasts, the quality requirements defined in the procurement were too general and did not oblige the tenderers to prove with sufficient confidence the availability of adequate resources for the execution of the specific delivery order.
Due to the low procurement requirements, there was a significant risk that the winner would be the tenderer with a low price offer, but without sufficient capacity. As a result, the lowest price principle prevailed, where in fact any competitor of Latvijas Pasts had an informative advantage – since Latvijas Pasts is a universal postal service provider, the company’s letter delivery tariffs, approved by the Public Utilities Commission, are known to anyone interested.
Latvijas Pasts considers the results of the procurement to be inappropriate, but has not disputed them mainly for one reason of national significance – by doing so Latvia would not be able to conduct the European Parliament election in a timely manner. Otherwise, the procurement results would have been disputed by Latvijas Pasts.
About SJSC Latvijas Pasts
Latvijas Pasts ensures the widest availability of postal services throughout Latvia by maintaining more than 600 post offices. The primary function of the company is provision of the universal postal service; Latvijas Pasts also provides commercial transport, express mail, payment, press subscription, retail and philatelic services. Latvijas Pasts is a wholly State-owned company with around 4,000 employees. The quality measurements of Latvijas Pasts domestic mail deliveries are regularly conducted by Kantar TNS, one of the leading market, social and media research agencies in Latvia. In turn, the quality measurements of the cross-border deliveries are provided within the framework of the International Post Corporation through the intermediary of the research companies Kantar TNS, Ipsos and Quotas.
Additional information:
Gundega Vārpa | Head of External Communications
Phone: +371 67608505
E-mail: pr@pasts.lv; gundega.varpa@pasts.lv
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