How is an award decision in a public tender objected to?
Once an award decision has been issued, the door does not close at once on the other bidders. Article 17 of Public Contracts Execution Instructions No. 1 of 2025 requires the contracting authority to inform the unsuccessful bidders of the decision, of the reasons they were not awarded the contract, and of the possibility of objecting under the procedures in the Instructions. Article 19 is the provision that governs that objection: the body, the time limit, what must be attached, what the committee must do, and the effect on signing the contract.
The Law Office of Ali Barakat reads this path from the text in force. What follows is a statement of article 19.
Who considers the objection?
In each contracting authority a central committee is formed to consider objections filed by bidders against award decisions. It is chaired by an official whose grade is not lower than grade two, with members experienced in financial, legal and technical matters, and a secretary to the committee. Its members must not be persons who serve on the bid-opening or bid-analysis committees, or on the Central Committee for Ratification of the Award. The separation between those who analysed the bid and those who consider the objection is deliberate in the text.
This committee sits inside the contracting authority. It is not the Public Government Contracts Department at the Ministry of Planning, and it is not a court. The later decision on its recommendation is for the Central Committee for Ratification of the Award, as set out below.
The time limit and what is filed with the objection
The committee studies written objections filed by objecting bidders or their official agents who have not requested withdrawal of the initial bond. The objection is filed within seven working days from the date of notification of the award letter. It is accompanied by a formally certified undertaking that allows the contracting authority to forfeit the initial bond in place of the value of damage suffered by the authority from delay in signing the contract for malicious or unjustified reasons.
The days are working days, not calendar days, as the text states. A bidder who has requested withdrawal of the initial bond falls — under the article — outside the class of persons whose objections the committee studies.
What do the two committees do after an objection is filed?
The objections committee must study all objections and submit a single minute, setting out the subject of each objection and its grounds, with the committee's recommendation, to the Central Committee for Ratification of the Award, within fourteen working days from the end of the seven-day period. The recommendation is either to reject the objection, or to cancel the award decision and re-analyse the objectors' bids together with the bid of the person to whom the award was made, and to recommend whether or not the initial bond should be forfeited in accordance with the undertaking.
The Central Committee for Ratification of the Award must decide on the recommendation within seven working days from the date it is submitted. If that period passes without a decision, the objection is treated as rejected.
Effect of the objection on signing the contract
The contracting authority must not sign the contract until objections have been resolved under article 19. The time taken by the objection and the decision is not counted toward the period for signing the contract in article 17, first paragraph. If an objection by one of the bidders is accepted and the award is cancelled, that cancellation creates no obligations on the contracting authority, under article 19, sixth paragraph.
Filing an objection does not mean that the award will be cancelled, or that the bond will be forfeited or returned. That is left to the objections committee's recommendation and then to the ratification committee's decision, within the text. The office is in Baghdad, Yarmouk, and it follows the question without claiming a branch in the contracting authority's governorate.
Legal basis and sources
Frequently asked questions
Is the objection filed with the Ministry of Planning?
Not in the first instance. It is filed with the central committee for considering objections in the contracting authority that issued the award decision. The Ministry of Planning issues instructions and controls; it is not the first objections committee in the file.
What if the seven working days from notification pass with no objection?
The text sets the period at seven working days from notification of the award letter. Whether the period has expired is read in the light of the text and of the fact of notification.