New Delhi, 11 Nov (KNN) In response of the overhauling of the public procurement process by the Finance Ministry, the Karnataka Small Scale Industries Association (KASSIA) has cautiously welcomed it.

“Awarding government contracts to L1 bidders often came at the cost of compromising quality and eventually project over-runs and was used by large vendors to defeat the better quality-oriented MSME vendors by quoting less mainly due to the advantages of scale they enjoyed,” said KASSIA.

The Association said that, this will put an end to the blind approach of awarding the tender to the lowest bidder and benefit the quality conscious MSMEs.

It has also cautioned the Government of India to take appropriate steps to ensure that the new relaxation is not used by the procuring entities to willy-nilly prevent genuine MSMEs who quote the lowest bid, from bagging the contract.

Pointing towards the cap in the contract size of INR 10 crore, KASSIA has said that it was too less and has appealed to the Centre to enhance the ceiling so as to make it more broad-based and have real impact at the ground level.

It has also welcomed the push to mandate ad-hoc payment of at least 75% of the amount due within 10 days of the bill submission by the procuring entity to the vendor and the balance to be payable within 28 days overall, and said this too will provide a lot of relief to the MSME, if the guidelines were implemented in letter and spirit.