The Bangkok Mass Transit Authority (BMTA) on Thursday terminated the bidding for the first batch of 489 natural gas for vehicle-fuelled (NGV) buses worth 1.7 billion baht.
Acting BMTA director Pranee Sukrasorn said the BMTA board decided to cancel the bidding as the agency's terms of reference (TOR) violated Section 26 of the 1996 Administrative Procedure Act.
Under the act, if a bidder's proposal is in a foreign language, the document must be translated into Thai and certified by the Thai embassy in the country of the original language.
However, the BMTA's TOR said a bidder's documents must be certified by its embassy in Thailand which contradicted the law.
Ms Pranee said the TOR also did not specify whether Khon Kaen Cho Thavee or Cho Thavee Dollasien Plc (CTV-DOLL), owned the proposal for the NGV buses submitted by JVCC, a joint venture between the two firms.
She said the lack of information could directly affect the decision of the BMTA in selecting the bid winner because the TOR must specify only one company to oversee the NGV buses, according to the Prime Minister's Office procurement regulations.
She added CTV-DOLL has not yet brought a lawsuit against the agency, saying the firm was aware of the bidding cancellation.
A formal announcement of the termination will also be made next week.
Ms Pranee said a new bidding round and contract signing were expected to be held in January and March next year, respectively, if the BMTA was not taken to court.
Suradech Taweesaengsakulthai, CTV-DOLL's president and chief executive officer, said the firm might file suit because the scrapping of the bid due to the BMTA's error directly affected the company's turnover.
He said the auction process was actually completed early this year but the process had been delayed until now due to many obstacles.
"The mistake was caused by the BMTA's TOR, not the company. Therefore, we have the right to file a lawsuit against the agency and we are confident we won't lose the case," Mr Suradech said.
He added he was not certain whether his firm will take part in the next bidding round early next year as the incident had made it lose faith in the BMTA.