“Nitinai” Affirms “MINT” Fails to Qualify, Expecting to Announce the Winner by Tomorrow!

On May 30, 2019, Mr. Nitinai Sirismatthakarn, President of Airports of Thailand Public Company Limited (AOT), has made a clarification through live broadcast on YouTube, Facebook, and FM 102.0 MHz to the matter of disqualifying Minor International Public Company Limited (MINT) from the bidding of the commercial area in Suvarnabhumi Airport.

Mr. Nitinai reiterates that the disqualification of MINT was due to the purchaser of the bidding envelope and the submitter of the envelope was a different corporation. To be more specific, the purchaser was Minor International Public Company Limited, which is a holding company without any working experience in the field while the one who actually has the experience to meet the requirement is “Minor Food,” a subsidiary of MINT, which is the corporation that MINT presented in the proposal.

Minor Food is considered a different corporation of MINT while the TOR has stated that the purchaser and submitter must be the same corporation. The fact that MINT used Minor Food’s working experience in the proposal was against the TOR’s condition while the one who participated in the bidding had no working experience. This is to avoid the disposal of shares from the company after acquiring the concession.

Minor Food, as MINT’s subsidiary, used to be the one entering the bidding for commercial area of Phuket and Don Muang Airport. Mr. Nitinai asserts that the reason for MINT entering as the bidder is still unknown.

Participants were allowed to enter the bidding by registering as a joint venture and consortium. However, MINT did not submit such forms to AOT.

Mr. Nitinai also clarifies that Central Pattana, as a competitor in this bidding, has also a lot of subsidiaries doing business in this field. Nevertheless, he confirms that regardless of the subsidiaries, CPN itself has enough working experience to meet the requirement. Thus, making the result between the two companies came out in a different way.

When asking what would have happened if MINT appeal to the Administrative Court, Mr. Nitinai states that MINT could have done so, but believes that it would not affect the rest of the bidding process.

In addition, AOT will open the envelope containing the bidding price for Duty-Free concession tomorrow morning and commercial area tomorrow afternoon. The unofficial winner is expected to be announced by tomorrow.