A tender for the procurement of information distribution services via mobile communication is being held on the electronic procurement portal of JSC "NMF "Samruk-Kazyna". The editorial board of the FBRC decided to find out more details about the competition.
JSC "Kazpost" published a tender announcement for the procurement of a bulk SMS distribution service. The delivery period under the contract is from March to December 2024. The value of the lot amounted to over 312 million tenge. This concerns more than 30 million short messages, the content of which is not specified in the technical specification.
In April 2023, the Anti-Corruption Service gained notoriety for its bulk messaging. The messages reminded Kazakh citizens about the illegality of corruption offences. Admittedly, this had rather a different effect. People were outraged by the unjustified expenditure on the mailing, and the content of the messages was turned into memes on social media. However, the Anti-Corruption Service assured that the mailing was a pilot project on which not a single tenge from the budget had been spent.
Thanks to the amusing but not particularly successful project by the Anti-Corruption Service, the authors of the Telegram channel Shishkin_like decided to calculate the spending of akimats, law enforcement agencies, and their subsidiary organisations on similar services in 2022. The total amount came to over 320 million tenge.
Specifically, the Judicial Administration under the Supreme Court spent over 169 million tenge on information distribution. And even this sum pales in comparison to Kazpost's expenses.
Journalists compiled a list of the most frequent winners of tenders for the procurement of information distribution services. The list was topped by KazInfoTech ACP LLP, SMS-Consult LLP, and KaR-Tel LLP (Beeline).
Of course, comparing prices for similar services in 2022 and 2024 is not entirely accurate. However, JSC "Kazpost" had entered into the same contracts over three years. In 2021, the contract amount was over 270 million tenge, in 2022 – over 260 million tenge, and in 2023 – over 350 million tenge. Throughout these years, the supplier was the aforementioned SMS-Consult LLP.
Undoubtedly, the annual volume of SMS sent by Kazpost is quite substantial. However, is this service worth 312 million tenge when, apparently, there is an opportunity to spend significantly less? Moreover, parcel notifications can be received through the app and via the Kazpost Telegram bot.
Let us recall that recently, information was circulating online that JSC "Kazpost" had leased over 27,500 office chairs for 400 million tenge. The company acknowledged the leasing fact and also stated that payments were made from the company's own funds, not the budget. Furthermore, representatives of the postal operator reported that the chairs were actually purchased on an "instalment plan".