Southern Africa Development Community Secretariat – Procurement and Grants Policy Article 39. Examination, evaluation and comparison of bids (1) The evaluation of bids or proposals shall be conducted by an officially appointed Evaluation Committee which shall have the required competences to give an informed opinion on the submitted bids or proposals. (2) The Evaluation Committee shall consist of minimum three evaluators. The number of evaluators shall always be an odd number. The committee will be presided by a Chairperson appointed by the appointing authority or the evaluators from amongst themselves. The Chairperson will be the only authorised representative of the Evaluation Committee entitled to communicate with third parties in relation with the decisions of the Evaluation Committee. (3) The Secretary of the Evaluation Committee shall be a procurement expert and shall have responsibility to take record of meetings and provide technical guidance to the members of the Evaluation Committee on matters relating to this Policy and its Regulations while the voting members are entrusted with the responsibility of evaluating the bids and issue recommendation for award of the contract. (4) The Evaluation Committee shall be independent and impartial and all members shall have equal rights. All members of the Evaluation Committee shall be individually and collectively responsible for observing the principles of this Policy. (5) The members of the Evaluation Committee shall sign a statement of impartiality and confidentiality acknowledging that they are not in a conflict of interest position and will not disclose any information to economic operators or to any other person not involved officially in the examination, evaluation or comparison of bids or in the decision on which bids should be accepted, except as provided in Article 10 of this Policy. (6) The Procuring Entity may appoint non-voting members to the Evaluation Committee, called Observers, to observe the way the evaluation proceedings are conducted. The Observers shall be subject to the same obligation about confidentiality as the members of the Evaluation Committee and shall be forbidden to interfere in the evaluation process. (7) In case none of the members of the Evaluation Committee have sufficient knowledge to evaluate certain aspects of a bid, they can invite external expert to guide them. This shall not relive member of the Evaluation Committee from the responsibility of the evaluation. During the evaluation process, the Procuring Entity, at the request of Evaluation Committee may ask economic operators for clarifications of their bids in order to assist in the examination, evaluation and comparison of bids. No change in a matter of substance in the bid, including changes in price and changes aimed at making an unresponsive bid responsive, shall be sought, offered or permitted; (8) Notwithstanding subparagraph (7) above, the Procuring Entity, at the Evaluation Committee’s recommendation, shall correct purely arithmetical errors that are discovered during the examination of bids. The Procuring Entity shall give prompt notice of any such correction to the economic operator that submitted the bid, for concurrence and acceptance or about any other corrections and/or clarifications resulting from the correspondence with the bidder during the tendering process. (9) Subject to paragraph (11) below, the Procuring Entity may regard a bid as responsive only if it complies with all requirements set forth in the bidding documents. (10) The Procuring Entity may regard a bid as responsive even if it contains minor deviations that do not materially alter or depart from the characteristics, terms, conditions and other requirements set forth in the bidding documents or if it contains errors or oversights that are capable of being corrected without touching on the substance of the bid. Any such deviations shall be quantified, to the extent possible, and appropriately taken account of, in the evaluation and comparison of bids. 30