The Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Co Ltd says no con­tract has been is­sued for its ten­der to sup­ply trac­tors. In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the com­pa­ny al­so stat­ed that no com­mu­ni­ca­tion had been is­sued to any bid­der with re­spect to the out­come of the ten­der process. Fol­low­ing is the full text of the state­ment:

"The Trinidad & To­ba­go Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd wish­es to ad­vise the pub­lic of the fol­low­ing facts with re­spect to the Pub­lic Ten­der for the Lease of Trac­tors for Haulage (20) as ad­ver­tised by the com­pa­ny in Jan­u­ary 2011: To date, no award for this con­tract has been is­sued by the com­pa­ny; fur­ther, no com­mu­ni­ca­tion has been is­sued to any bid­der with re­spect to the out­come of the ten­der process.

• The said ten­der was for the sup­ply of trac­tors (units to be not more than three years old). These trac­tors are to be hooked up to NP's tankers and dri­ven by NP's qual­i­fied dri­vers as per the ex­ist­ing arrange­ment.

• The com­pa­ny recog­nis­es that these new spe­cialised trac­tors are not avail­able on the lo­cal mar­ket and would take at least five to six months to be de­liv­ered.

• The ten­der was for the pro­vi­sion of a sup­pli­er who could de­liv­er these trac­tors on lease and pro­vide the re­quired lev­el of main­te­nance ser­vices so as to en­sure high lev­els of re­li­a­bil­i­ty, safe­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy of NP's sup­ply net­work.

• All ap­pli­cants were in­vit­ed to at­tend the pub­lic open­ing of the ten­der at NP House, Na­tion­al Dri­ve, Sea Lots, on Feb­ru­ary 9, 2011.

The com­pa­ny's stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dure is that all ten­ders are gov­erned by its ap­proved Ten­ders Pro­ce­dure Guide (Ten­ders and Con­tracts for Works and Ser­vices). NP holds it­self to the high­est stan­dard in fair­ness and trans­paren­cy. NP re­mains com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that our dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work op­er­ates at op­ti­mum ef­fi­cien­cy to re­dound to the dri­ving pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and we con­tin­ue to com­ply with best busi­ness prac­tice in achiev­ing our ob­jec­tives."