Biman’s high officials must answer for the uneven deal that cost over Tk 1000cr

Biman has violated procurement rules to hire a vendor for its online ticket sales and reservation services, and this will lead to Biman losing over Tk 1,000 crore in 10 years. The auditor general’s office stated in its report that Sabre Sabre GLBL Inc, a Texas-based firm, has been providing Biman since 2003 with a global distribution system (GDS), which hosts Biman tickets and bookings for travel agents across the world. Biman officials curtailed competition on purpose and hid the actual estimates that may make the carrier lose at least Tk 1,059 crore during the 10-year contract period with Sabre.

While a firm named SITA was serving Biman with a passenger service system (PSS), which keeps tabs on how many passengers are actually boarding planes after booking tickets, and a departure control system (DCS), a tool for pre-flight operations. The audit flagged that the financial proposal states that the costs of using the PSS and DCS will increase by 2 per cent every year, but this was not taken into consideration during the evaluation. Biman’s contract with Sabre has many elements that were not mentioned in the financial proposal.

The auditors estimate that Biman boards 18.3 lakh passengers in a year and this costs the carrier a significant amount of money. All costs proposed by Sabre were estimated taking into account the minimum number of passengers. Since the company is charging for services either per passenger or as a percentage of total passengers boarded, these costs ballooned when the system went live. This was also flagged by the tender evaluation committee at three negotiation meetings held in July 2021. The fact that the pricing only takes into account the minimum threshold was a point of discussion. Despite these, the contract was signed with the minimum threshold number.
The contract only states what the booking charge per ticket will be, but it does not mention how many tickets are estimated to be sold throughout the duration of the contract period, and how much the total cost may be. The national carrier high-ups must answer for their misdeeds and slap a fine for what the state coffer lost.