Comptroller: Call to acquire urea for more than S/300 million did not have conditions to ensure timely purchase

A report from the Comptroller General of the Republic (CGR), released today, warns that the purchase of more than 73,000 tons of fertilizers, arranged by the Ministry of Agrarian Development and Irrigation (Midagri) through the Agrarian-Rural Productive Development Program (Agro Rural), lacked conditions that guarantee the effectiveness in compliance and the public purpose of the process, putting at risk more than 300 million soles by the State.

According to the Comptroller, the approved guidelines and technical specifications (EETT) of the international call, launched on May 19, for the purchase of 73’529 tons of urea fertilizers for S/348,887,735, did not foresee “conditions for contracting the supplier of the fertilizers“, such as “deadlines, place of delivery of the good, technical guarantee period, form of payment, date of internment and the amount by delivery number”, among other basic aspects to finalize the purchase.

Without rigor for the purchase

According to the Comptroller’s report, the EETT did not specify “the tons that the supplier had to deliver in the first and second delivery or by port of destination.”

Regarding the guidelines for the selection of the most favorable offer, the Comptroller indicates that “no qualification requirements or parameters were foreseen” to ensure the selection “of a company that has the experience and capacity to attend in a timely manner” the more than 73,000 tons of fertilizers required.

On this point, in the technical specifications, “only the presentation of the constitution of the company, the financial statement or another equivalent document that certifies international sales of the good object of the purchase or similar in the last two years was considered”, but not “the minimum/maximum volume of production or sale of the requested good” was specified.

On the other hand, regarding the call process, the Comptroller points out that “no publicity mechanisms were foreseen in the market investigation stage”, therefore “the plurality of bidders and free competition to select the most advantageous offer” was not guaranteed.

Another noteworthy fact is that linked to the committee in charge of purchases. According to the CGR, the guidelines stated that he was “empowered to select the most favorable offer” and that his functions would be in accordance with “the principles of the Code of Ethics for Public Functions.” However, “their activities and/or functions were not specified.”

Affected Farmers

The Comptroller He pointed out that with all these deficiencies detected in the process, Agro Rural ran the risk of “not complying with the timely delivery of urea nitrogen fertilizer to agricultural producers.” This is due to the increase in the deadlines established for the delivery of the input indicated in the technical specifications.

The report states that, according to the schedule of Agro Rural, the delivery of the product to the warehouse was going to take place on August 3, without considering other activities such as “bagging and labeling” that do not appear in the tentative schedule.

“Therefore, the 73,529 tons of urea fertilizers would have been delivered to the port probably on September 4, 2022, being distributed to the peripheral warehouses of Agro Rural on September 14 and distributed to the field (beneficiaries) on the 21st of the same month. “.

However, the Comptroller He specified that the agricultural campaign runs from August 2022 to July 2023, “for which the agricultural producers are provided with the fertilizers in advance in order to guarantee the fertilization of their crops from sowing”. In other words, the fertilizers would have arrived a month late.

As is known, the process of buying the fertilizers on the part of the State had as its starting point the declaration of emergency in the agricultural sector decreed on March 19 due to the effects of COVID-19. Said process now has been declared void following the cancellation of the public tender by Agro-Rural.