The Artes Gráficas/Lexton consortium and the company Académica won election tenders, by direct award without competitive tender, for $235mn (15bn meticais - MT) between June 2022 and August 2024. The companies are owned by the Sidat family, which is very close to Frelimo.
Electoral authorities justify the awards, saying the companies “have been working for a long time with the election administration and management bodies in providing these and other services, and always with an unquestionable quality”. But another advantages of using Sidat family companies is that they supply elections equipment even when the state is slow to pay. Government still has not paid Sidat family companies more than $140mn (9bn MT) for the 2023 voter registration.
CNE spokesperson Paulo Cuinica admitted on Monday (30 September) that election bodies are still facing a budget deficit, but preparation is continuing “at a good pace, thanks to the good will of the suppliers, and of the stakeholders in the elections”.
Direct awards have been justified by STAE and CNE with the argument that “the reduced time to produce the materials that were the object of the awards and the need to comply with the security mechanisms required in the production and transport, plus delivery in good time, could only be guaranteed by suppliers of recognised merit, who are knowledgeable about Mozambican elections – that is, suppliers with experience in providing this type of service”.
But direct award is a modality heavily used and abused by public bodies in order to benefit particular business people. The launch of public tenders is delayed until there is not enough time for the competitive bidding, and managers resort to direct awards, alleging lack of time.
Académica won $60mn August tender for training and voting material
Training of polling station staff is already under way and voting is on 9 October and the direct award to Académica, Limitada, for $60mn (3.8bn MT) for materials was only issued in August this year. STAE said “there is less than 30 days to set in motion all the contracting procedures which, as a rule, would take about 90 days, not including possible claims and appeals”, which would “suspend the tender”.
STAE added that this 90 day period does not include the production and transport of the material from the production centres in China and South Africa to Mozambique and from Mozambique to the nine other countries where Mozambicans can vote in this year’s general elections. The estimated time for contracting, production and transport, according to STAE, would have been 240 days. The election material is being produced by the South African company Uniprint. The transport company Lalgy, belonging to the Lalgy family with connections to Frelimo, is transporting the material.
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Direct award in January but only signed in October
Perhaps the strangest contracts were three direct awards totalling $40mn granted to Académica on 12, 16 and 18 January 2023. Supposedly direct awards require haste, but the contracts were only signed 9 months later, on 10 October 2023, one day before the municipal elections of 2023. The contracts are for one year, and thus expire one day after this year's national elections on 9 October. The contracts are to provide services to improve the computer application, including its maintenance, and supply of accessories for the "Mobile-IDs", the portable computers used for voter registration last year and this year
Also in 2023, Académica benefitted from two other directly awarded contracts worth $11mn. They were for the 11 October 2023 municipal election, to supply polling station staff (MMV) training material and voting materials.
In 2022 the Artes Gráficas-Lexton consortium won direct awards worth $127mn for voter registration material for 2023, including the pilot registration, and equipment for the 2024 voter registration. Artes Gráfica is a company belonging to the Sidat family.
