SIF Rejects Claims of Favoritism in Contract Awards

The Belize Social Investment Fund is clarifying its strict adherence to its procurement process following misleading allegations made by former Belmopan Area Representative John Saldivar.  In a social media post, UDP’s John Saldivar pointed to contracts awarded to the FAST Construction Company for a number of BSIF-funded projects, suggesting that the company may have received preferential treatment during the bidding process. He also questioned whether Fast Construction was awarded contracts even when it was not the lowest bidder.  BSIF has since responded with an official statement rejecting those claims. The Fund says its procurement process is guided by strict rules and oversight mechanisms and insists that contracts are not awarded based on political influence, personal relationships, or favoritism.  Speaking with Love News, Executive Director Carlos Tun rejected the suggestion that outside influence played any role in the contract awards. He said every procurement exercise goes through a structured evaluation process and is subject to multiple layers of review.

Carlos Tun, Executive Director, Belize Social Investment Fund: “Those are allegations. As the head of procurement, Ms. Angeles mentioned there’s certain levels of evaluation to ensure that the bid becomes responsive. I read the social media posting which says it’s lowest bidder and we have to make clarity on that. It’s not always the lowest bidder. It’s the lowest responsive bidder, meaning it has to pass through the process to ensure that that bidder is responsive. And then we look at the lowest bid. So that’s a point of clarity. We have a lot of work to do here at SIF. We have a lot of work that we don’t really engage too much on the allegations because we know that our process is very transparent. From the time of advertisement to the notification, to the getting no objection from the bank, from the concurrence of the consultant who is an independent body the bank uses to supervise his work. All of those processes entails that our process is very transparent. So we don’t worry so much about that. I think the intention of having this interviews is to reassure the public that our process is very transparent and clear.”

Tun explained that BSIF operates under procurement guidelines established by international funding partners, with all bids assessed against predetermined criteria designed to ensure fairness and transparency.  Also responding to the allegations was Procurement Manager Angeles Itzab, who addressed the specific projects mentioned by Saldivar. She explained that while cost is an important factor, contracts are not awarded solely to the lowest bidder.  According to Itzab, evaluators also consider a contractor’s technical capacity, financial strength, experience, compliance with bidding requirements, and ability to successfully complete the work. She noted that the goal is to identify the bidder that offers the best overall value and has the capacity to deliver the project as required.

Angeles Itzab, Belize Social Investment Fund: “For example we know that maybe perhaps they weren’t able to participate in processes due to prior because maybe they were just starting out. But I believe that most of the criteria that we use are five years of experience and we are aware that this company has been, I think in operations for more than five years and they do have to present to us contracts in the past of similar works carried out and we do our due diligence and the forms would usually indicate for them to tell us who was their employer of that particular project that they’re putting down as experience and our team would you carry out the due diligence to call the contact and ask them is this really a works that were carried out by them. And we’ve had experiences in the past where maybe perhaps other bidders put something that isn’t true and we do point it out into our evaluation and then and that would be the only reason why they wouldn’t get that contract.”

BSIF says every contract under its portfolio is subject to public tendering, competitive bidding, independent evaluation, and oversight from the respective funding agencies. The organization maintains that those safeguards are in place to ensure accountability and transparency in the delivery of projects across the country./