The bidding process is lengthy and complicated.
According to the current Law on Bidding, the procurement of press services, including the purchase of press information products, services, advertising, or other media services from press agencies, if the value is from 100 million VND or more, must comply with the bidding process, not designated bidding.
To participate in bidding packages for press services, especially press distribution for State agencies, press agencies must face a lengthy and sometimes very complicated bidding process. Administrative procedures, required documents, and bidding criteria are often very detailed and require press agencies to have personnel with expertise in this field.
For example, at Lao Dong Newspaper, major customers are provincial and municipal labor federations, central industry unions - units that buy newspapers to distribute to union levels, union members, and workers in order to promptly propagate the Party's policies, the State's laws and policies, and the action programs of the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor. However, currently, bringing Lao Dong Newspaper's products to customers is facing many difficulties due to the provisions of the Bidding Law.
The reason is that at the provincial and municipal labor federations and central industry unions, there are no officials with professional certificates in bidding work; they have never done bidding work (only received training).
According to the provisions of the Bidding Law, units must hire independent consultants, which is costly and time-consuming, so units do not do it; in addition, in cases where a consulting unit has been hired for bidding work, but due to lack of expertise and certificates in bidding work, the staff advising on newspaper purchasing does not dare to advise, and initials the bidding draft to submit to the leadership for approval. Another difficulty is that press agencies are willing to support consulting for newspaper buyers on bidding work - however, this can easily lead to "misunderstandings" of collusion, which is against the law.
Also facing difficulties in bidding, the director of the advertising distribution center of a central newspaper said that because the customer side was not familiar with the bidding process, many contracts were delayed for up to half a year. "There were contracts that were supposed to start in January, but because the units did not have knowledge and experience in bidding, it took us 6 months to be able to distribute the newspaper to this unit," he said.
According to this person, each press agency has its own "color", and that is one of the important factors that create the diversity and characteristics of press agencies. Requiring press agencies to participate in the bidding process may encounter major problems, because these characteristics of the press are very difficult to standardize or apply evenly within the framework of bidding packages.
“Each newspaper has a different way of conveying content, and the reputation of the newspaper’s brand is different. Therefore, we cannot use a common price for bidding,” he affirmed.
Lost from the start
Another problem that press agencies face during the bidding process is having to compete with media companies, newspaper agents... One press agency once had to compete with its own newspaper agent and lost right from the start.
The representative of this unit said that when agencies want to order newspapers, they can buy through the following channels: Sign a contract with the press agency itself, buy from the Central Press Distribution Company or from agents... While press agencies cannot arbitrarily reduce prices, agents can reduce prices (from distribution fees).
Meanwhile, a press agency in Hanoi said that it has lost 3 contracts since the beginning of 2024 due to its inability to compete on price with media companies.
The representative of the advertising distribution center of this press agency said that there are bidding packages that require the bidding unit to have a press license. However, there are bidding packages that do not have this provision. This leads to the situation where media companies (affiliated with press agencies) can also participate in the bidding.
This person once encountered a case where a press agency quoted an article for 5 million VND, while media companies only quoted 2 million VND. Although the quality of the article, form, and content may not meet the customer's requirements, in terms of price, these media companies were able to win the bid. "Press agencies were already facing many difficulties, and now they are facing even more difficulties," this person said.
