Summary
CRRC’s disqualification for insufficient experience was invalid under the tender terms. Its demonstrated integration with wholly owned subsidiaries allowed their experience to be counted as that of the government-owned single entity. A clarification about a subsidiary borrowing its parent’s credentials addressed a different situation. The ruling concerned experience eligibility alone, not final award.
Issues
- Whether CRRC could count wholly owned subsidiaries’ experience under the single-entity tender provisions.
Held
- Under the relevant clauses and demonstrated corporate integration, CRRC and its wholly owned subsidiaries were treated as a coherent single entity for experience eligibility, without requiring a joint venture or consortium. (¶ 34–37)
- The pre-bid clarification concerned a subsidiary seeking its parent’s experience. Applying it to the parent bidder claiming its integrated subsidiaries’ experience was arbitrary and inconsistent with the tender’s context. (¶ 38–39)
- The adjudication was expressly confined to disqualification under the experience criterion; the remaining tender process had to proceed under its conditions and the law. (¶ 40)
Result
Appeal allowed without costs; experience-based disqualification and High Court judgment set aside, with the tender process to continue expeditiously according to law.