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The lowest submitted bid is disqualified, while the award criterion is price only.

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Methodology

A contracting process is flagged if:
  • There are one or more active awards.
  • There are one or more valid bids with amounts.
  • The lowest submitted bid is disqualified.
ExampleThe Public Works Department sets the award criterion as lowest price. FairDeal Inc. submits a bid of 100,000.BribeCorpsubmitsabidof100,000. BribeCorp submits a bid of 111,111. The Public Works Department disqualifies the bid from FairDeal Inc.
Why is this a red flag?A corrupt buyer can award the pre-determined bidder by disqualifying lower-priced bids.
Based on “The lowest bid is rejected almost inexplicably” in Fraud in Public Procurement: A collection of Red Flags and Best Practices, “Lowest bidder not selected” in Common Red Flags of Fraud and Corruption in Procurement, and “Award to other than lowest qualified bidder” in Guide to Combating Corruption & Fraud in Infrastructure Development Projects.

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Output

The indicator’s value is always 1.0.

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Configuration

The indicator is not configurable at the indicator level.
See global settings for no_price_comparison_procurement_methods and price_comparison_procurement_methods to control when price comparison indicators are applied.

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Implementation Details

The indicator (from src/indicators/r036.rs):
  • Only applies to procurement methods where price comparison is relevant
  • Tracks the lowest bid amount across all submitted bids
  • Handles currency matching (skips bids with mismatched currencies)
  • Checks if the lowest bid has status “disqualified”
  • Requires at least one valid bid with an amount to be present
  • Flags the process if the lowest bid is disqualified and there are valid bids
Bids with different currencies than the first observed currency are skipped. The tool logs warnings about currency mismatches (can be configured to info level).

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Exclusions

A contracting process is excluded if:
  • Prices are predetermined by the buyer (based on procurement method configuration).

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Demonstration

Input 
// Example OCDS release with lowest bid disqualified
Output 
ocdscardinal indicators --settings docs/examples/settings.ini --no-meta docs/examples/R/036.jsonl

{"OCID":{"F":{"R036":1.0}}}

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