The government has decided to proceed with the tender for the purchase of fuel for Électricité du Liban in order to supply power plants, taking into account the observations of the Public Procurement Authority, and to examine the possibility of shortening the bidding deadline.
The decision was taken on Monday at a meeting of the Ministerial Commission in charge of the electricity dossier. The meeting was chaired by caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, and attended by the majority of ministers from the caretaker government.
At the end of the meeting, the caretaker Minister of Energy, Walid Fayad, announced the decision, noting the need to speed up the necessary steps to obtain fuel in order to avoid a total blackout.
Fayad indicated that the commission had discussed the response of the Public Procurement Authority, which considered that the bid contained substantial anomalies, whereas his ministry considered that there were none, and assured that it had clear answers to all the points raised.
In this context, it should be recalled that, last week, the Authority for Public Markets recommended re-launching the tender for the purchase, in December, of gas oil and diesel with a maximum sulfur content of 10,000 ppm (in exchange for that sent by Iraq) to meet the needs of EDL and the Ministry of Telecommunications (for the operation of telephone exchanges).
For his part, Walid Fayad accused the Director of Tenders, Jean Ellieh, of making a serious mistake and thus leading the country into a total blackout.
