U.S. Information Agency, Office of Contracts, 301 4TH STREET SW, Room M27, Washington, DC 20547

76 -- BOOKS POC John Sheely, Fax.: 91-11-3327328, 91-11-3329499 Furnished below are the specifications for synopsis for contract action in the CBD for procurement of books, non-Government documents/reports/pamphlets, CD-ROMs, multi-media CD-ROMs, audio & video cassettes. USIS New Delhi, India procures the above material for the USIS India Information Resource Centers (IRC) and Program Offices at New Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta and Chennai and also for one bi-national center at Hyderabad, USIS (IRC) Colombo, USIS (IRC) Dhaka and USIS (IRC) Kathmandu. We propose to issue a single or multiple blanket purchase agreement(s), i.e. BPA in favor of the one or more vendor(s) in October 1998. The period of the contract will end on September 30, 1999. The total value of orders that will be issued against the BPA(s) may be somewhere in the range of Dols. 150,000 to Dols. 175,000, approximately. USIS India however provides no such guarantee that our orders will match the above figures. The actual procurement might fall well short of these figures. 1. Bidders should quote the maximum discount that they can offer on the above material. They should also quote separately for providing the following services: a) Partial Technical Processing, i.e., Cover-Ups, and b) Complete Technical Processing 2. In addition to the discounts provided as per (1) above, the vendor shall charge prices that shall be as low or lower than those charged to the vendor's most favored customers for comparable quantities under similar terms and conditions. 3. It is the vendor's responsibility to provide us with catalogs, list prices and all other pertinent details of titles and publications available with them throughout the period of the contract. These titles and publications may be in the form of printed matter, CD-ROM, audio and video cassette. 4. The vendor should quote separately for servicing urgent requests. 5. Separate delivery orders via fax/e-mail will be issued to the vendor against the BPA. The vendor will be required to provide monthly status reports of titles shipped and back ordered. 6. Vendor will try to ship all the material listed in each delivery order as opposed to partial shipments. In case partial shipments are effected, vendor will submit invoice for each shipment separately. Partial payments are authorized during the validity of the contract and payment will be processed only after receipt of the material and their inspection. 7. If any material received is found to be in damaged condition/defective or at variance with the ordering specs, the vendor will provide free replacement. 8. The vendor is to cancel the order for any book not shipped within six months of receipt of the delivery order. The vendor should provide this cancellation information in their monthly status reports. 9. The vendor will be required to ship to multiple addresses although the bill to address will be common on all orders. 10. Shipping: Packages weighing under 60 pounds will be shipped to the post Department of State address. Packages weighing over 60 pounds will be shipped to USIA's Brooklyn Warehouse. Hard copies of the responses to this Synopsis should mailed be directly to the post Department of State address as provided below: The Executive Officer, American Embassy (USIS) New Delhi, India, C/o Department of State, Washington D.C. 20521-9000. In order to avoid postal delay, we recommend that interested bidders fax their responses directly to: The Executive Officer, USIS New Delhi, India Fax nos.: 91-11-3327328, 91-11-3329499 The responses may also be sent via e-mail to: jsheely@usia.gov or sd1@usia.gov. Award will be made on the basis of low (aggregate) responsive, responsible bidder(s). The Government reserves the right to award more than one BPA if it is in the best interest of the Government. Offerors who can furnish the required items, may submit, in writing, to include pricing (FOB estination). All responses must be received within 15 calendar days of the date of this CBD notice. All responses from responsible sources submitting the required information will be fully considered. As a result of analyzing responsesto this synopsis to intent, the Contracting Officer may determine that the action may be awarded on a competitive basis. No additional synopsis will be published. Failure to provide adequate information to reflect compliance with the specifications of the required items here in will result in disqualification. Request for a solicitation will be considered nonresponsive. The last date for receipt of responses from interested bidders should be 15 days from the date of issuance of the CBD notice. No bids will, however, be accepted after October 10,1998. In case any of the prospective bidders have any questions or need any further clarifications, they may contact us at the fax nos. and e-mail addresses provided above. Posted 09/15/98 (W-SN250022). (0258)

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