The government of Vietnam, through the Public Procurement Agency (PPA), has selected the local subsidiary of PricewaterhouseCoopers as transaction advisor for the e-Government Procurement (e-GP) PPP project.

The company will have to provide financial, technical and legal advisory services for the selection of a private investor to implement the e-GP PPP project.

The transaction advisor will provide transaction advisory support to the MPI and the PPP Office during the bidding process until financial close of the project. It will be responsible for preparing necessary tender documents, including, among others:

• Request For Qualification (RFQ),
• Request For Proposal (RFP),
• Draft Contractual Agreements,
• Information Memorandum,
• Minimum Performance Standard Specifications,
• bid bulletins, and
• evaluation criteria.

The total budget available for the services is US$350,000. The contract will be for a period of one year.

The e-GP project involves the development of a national network of procurement systems and a legislative framework for adoption of e-procurement for all the units of the Vietnamese government. The total project investment is estimated at VND281 billion VND (US$12.3 million). The PPP contract is proposed for a period of 13 years, including 1.5 years of e-GP system development and 11.5 years of e-GP system operations.

A pilot e-procurement system was implemented by using Korea's KONEPS model between 2009 and 2011. During this period, a technical infrastructure system consisting of three components was installed. Namely, an e-bidding component, a user management component, and a portal using Public Key Infrastructure.