Energy & PSU

Who buys in this sector

Seven public-sector buyers account for a working vendor's year in energy and heavy industry, and each keeps its tenders in a place of its own.

NTPC runs a dedicated instance of NIC's e-procurement software, carrying the standard sentence that tenderers may “download the Tender Schedule free of cost and then submit the bids online through this portal”; its corporate tender page publishes the notices inviting tenders and the pre-qualification notices behind them.

Coal India and its subsidiaries have an instance of the same software, and the corporate site lists active and archived notices against it.

NHPC does the opposite. Its tender hub gathers tenders, corrigenda, award of contracts, the banned-firms list and vendor empanelment, but the bid is filed on the Central Public Procurement Portal: an NHPC notice says the techno-commercial bid and price bid are “to be submitted on-line at Central Public Procurement e-Portal”, and that enrolment there is free of charge.

ONGC lists current notices, e-gas tenders, expressions of interest, corrigenda and new-user registration on its tender site, while the bidding runs on a separate SAP-based system; the standard tender booklets for global goods, indigenous goods, rig charter and services sit beside the listings.

GAIL publishes on its own tender website, classified by purchase, works and consultancy, with corrigenda alongside, and runs SPARSH for vendors, “A Vendor or Supplier Portal for ingestion of digitally signed PDF copy of invoices, credit notes & retention release request by Vendors”.

SAIL tenders through mjunction, with separate vendor and buyer registration, and project e-tendering on mjPRO. BHEL keeps a corporate listing filtered by reference, contract type, unit and description, with tender and corrigendum notifications, and points suppliers at the SUVIDHA unified supplier portal.

Indian Railways sits at the edge of this sector for anyone supplying plant or rolling-stock components, on its own system with vendor approval through UVAM.

What they tender for

The same buyer therefore tenders under more than one of the Department of Expenditure's manuals in a year (goods for the equipment, works for the civil packages, consultancy for the design study), and a bidder meets whichever clauses the notice was drafted from. Which manual governs what is on The rules.

Where the tenders are published

One portal each, and no shared index. What holds the sector together is Rule 159 of GFR 2017, under which a central organisation publishes its tender enquiry, corrigenda and award of contract on the Central Public Procurement Portal even when the bidding happens on its own system; Rule 160 requires the bids to be received electronically. The ePublishing half of that portal exists for exactly this case. Where the buyer is on NIC's software, the notice and the bid are in the same place.

Registration does not travel. Enrolment on SUVIDHA, on mjunction, on ONGC's new-user registration and on NHPC's empanelment are separate exercises, and none substitutes for enrolment on the portal where the bid is filed. What each portal is, and what enrolment involves, is on The portals and Before you can bid.

The clauses that decide eligibility here

A PSU tender adds two layers to the rules every central buyer follows.

The first is standing: vendor registration or empanelment with the buyer, and, on high-value packages, a separate pre-qualification stage advertised ahead of the tender; NTPC publishes those as notices in their own right. A firm that has not registered by the time a package is advertised is reading it too late.

The second is local content. The Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) Order, as revised by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade on 4 June 2020, sorts every bidder into a “Class-I local supplier”, a “Class-II local supplier” or a “Non - Local supplier” by the local content in what is offered, and the definitions are the order's own. Above a value the order names, the percentage of local content has to be certified: “a certificate from the statutory auditor or cost auditor of the company (in the case of companies) or from a practicing cost accountant or practicing chartered accountant (in respect of suppliers other than companies).”Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, Ministry of Commerce and IndustryThe thresholds, the classes and the purchase preference are on Class-I, Class-II or non-local.

Two related provisions affect what an energy tender may ask for at all. The government's own summary of the amendment of 16 September 2020 records that “Specifying foreign certifications/ unreasonable technical specifications/ brands/ models in the bid document is restrictive and discriminatory practice against local suppliers”, and that administrative ministries and departments whose procurement exceeds a stated value must publish forward procurement projections on their websites.

Beyond those, a PSU tender names what every supply or works tender names: turnover and net worth, similar supply or works completed, plant and testing facilities, key personnel, and the registrations the notice lists. The turnover and similar-work arithmetic is on similar work and turnover, and how a technical bid fails on any of them is on why bids are rejected at technical evaluation.

Central public sector undertakings are inside the Public Procurement Policy for Micro and Small Enterprises, Order 2012, which sets a share of their annual procurement to come from micro and small enterprises; the price band and the exclusions are on what the MSE policy gives and does not.

Money in these bids

This is general information; confirm with the tender document and your adviser.

Bid security, or the bid-securing declaration that replaces it, comes first; the band that Rule 170(i) sets and the exemptions that apply are on EMD exemptions and the bid-securing declaration.

Performance security follows the award, under Rule 171 of GFR 2017 as amended by the office memorandum of 1 January 2024, which set one band for goods and services and kept works on its own. Rule 171(ii) requires that security to stay valid beyond every contractual obligation including warranty, and Rule 171(iii) refunds the bid security to the winner once it is received. Insurance surety bonds and electronic bank guarantees are now accepted instruments: what is held back after you win.

On a long plant or maintenance contract the money to watch is the money still inside it: retention from each running bill, its release against the defect liability period, and the route the release request travels; GAIL's SPARSH takes those through the same channel as the invoices. The four sums and the dates each comes back on are on Money in a bid.

A buyer also deducts tax at source under two Acts before a bill is paid; the rates and thresholds are a question for an accountant.

Debarment is the other thing an energy bidder watches, because the banned-firms lists sit on the buyers' own sites; the grounds were rewritten on 8 May 2026, as the Rule 151 amendment sets out.