Southern Africa Development Community Secretariat – Procurement and Grants Policy invites several potential economic operators to submit and negotiate technical and financial proposals. The application of this method may take place in successive stages of negotiation until the Procuring Entity is satisfied with the technical and commercial offer of the invited economic operators. The contract can only be awarded to the bidder that has submitted a technical compliant offer at the lowest negotiated price. (3) The Negotiated Procedure with Publication shall be used only in the case of contracts for: (a) large complex facilities awarded as single responsibility (including as turnkey) contracts for the design, supply and installation, or single responsibility contracts for the supply and installation of a facility or plant; (b) works of a complex and special nature; (c) complex design and build contracts or (d) complex equipment and information and technologies that are subject to rapid technology advances where it may be undesirable or impractical to prepare complete technical specifications in advance. (4) Unless the tender falls within the thresholds contemplated for it in the Procurement Regulations, the Negotiated Procedure without Publication shall be used only in the following situations: (a) following an unsuccessful open or restricted procedure, if the procuring entity cannot launch a new procurement process due to emergency reasons or adverse market conditions which prevents an open completion; (b) where the goods involved are manufactured purely for the purpose of research, experimentation, study or development; however, contracts awarded pursuant to this point shall not include quantity production to establish commercial viability or to recover research and development costs; (c) for the purchase of goods or services on particularly advantageous terms, from either a supplier which is definitively winding up its business activities, or the liquidator in an insolvency procedure, an arrangement with creditors, or a similar procedure under national laws or regulations; (d) for goods and services which due to safety and security reason can only be procured for a limited reputable sources (e.g.: drugs and medicines, financial services, legal services, medical services, etc) or where, for technical reasons, or reasons involving the protection of exclusive rights, proprietary goods, works or services, the contract can only be awarded to a limited number or a single economic operator; (e) for reasons of urgency, need or emergency or the nature of the tender, the Executive Secretary or the person delegated decides to follow this procedure; (f) where the time and cost of considering a large number of tenders is disproportionate to the value of the procurement; and (g) where the Procurement Regulations allow the procuring entity to pursue this procedure under certain thresholds, in which case the Negotiated Procedure is not an exceptional procedure and can be applied by the procuring entity without any special authorisation. (5) Unless the tender falls within the thresholds contemplated for it in the Procurement Regulations, the method shall only be deployed with prior approval of the relevant Tender Committee and if it has been fully demonstrated that the conditions for application of these methods have been met. (6) When the negotiation is done with a single contractor it is known as single source. 21