Mumbai: Firm that proposed to supply Pfizer vaccine withdraws bid

A supplier from Czech Republic who had proposed to supply Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), on Thursday, withdrew its proposal, said civic body officials

A supplier from Czech Republic who had proposed to supply Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), on Thursday, withdrew its proposal, said civic body officials. The supplier has not given any reason for the withdrawal, officials added. With this, now only seven interested suppliers offering Russian Sputnik V and Sputnik Light are in the race.

HT Image

The Czech supplier firm which withdrew its proposal on Thursday had responded to the BMC’s global expression of interest (EOI) floated on May 12 to procure 10 million Covid-19 vaccines. ​The supplier had also demanded advance payment in exchange for the same.

However, following BMC’s announcement of it receiving total eight responses that included seven proposals for supplying Russia’s Sputnik and one for supplying Pfizer and AstraZeneca, Pfizer stated that it had not authorised anyone for distribution of its Covid vaccine.

Pfizer in its statement had said, “Pfizer is supplying its COVID-19 vaccine only to central Governments and supranational organizations for deployment in national immunization programs. Neither Pfizer Inc nor any of its affiliates globally, including in India, have authorized anyone to import/market/distribute the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID 19 vaccine.”

Responding to this, the BMC on Wednesday had said that it will term the proposal of any supplier as ‘invalid’, in case no genuine link is found between the supplier and the manufacturer in its verification process.

On Thursday, however, the BMC received an email from the supplier from Czech Republic expressing its withdrawal from the process without giving any reason, confirmed P Velrasu, additional municipal commissioner of the BMC.

On whether the BMC like the Maharashtra government will go ahead and write to the Central government or any of the vaccine manufacturers for confirming the authenticity of the vaccine supply proposals, Velrasu said, “We will process the papers first. We have time till June 01. We will decide the future course of action later.”

The BMC had on May 12 floated the EOI, giving time till May 18, but it extended the last date till May 25 as it had received only three proposals. Post this, on May 25 it extended the proposal till June 1 on getting eight proposals.

Meanwhile, municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal on Monday had said that though BMC has got eight proposals, it will welcome more proposals till June 1.