Sri Lanka is negotiating with India for additional funding for its national digital identity programme after tender bids came in well above the grant New Delhi had pledged, according to a report by the specialist technology outlet Biometric Update.
The report, published on July 23, said proposals from shortlisted vendors for the Sri Lanka Unique Digital Identity (SL-UDI) project were more than double India’s original grant of INR 3 billion, roughly US$35 million. LankaNewz was unable to independently confirm the figures with a Sri Lankan newsroom at the time of writing; the details below are as reported by Biometric Update.
Deputy Minister Eranga Weeraratne was quoted as saying discussions with the Indian government are focused on raising the grant to match the vendor bids. “We are requesting them to increase the grant amount to fit in the pledged amounts by the companies that were shortlisted for the master systems integrator in the tender process,” he was quoted as saying. The report said the lowest evaluated bid was around Rs 24.6 billion.
The SL-UDI project aims to convert Sri Lanka’s standard national identity card into a digital ID with biometric features, built on the open-source MOSIP platform. It uses a hybrid model pairing an Indian master system integrator for the software with a local managed service provider for operations. The five firms shortlisted for the integrator role were named as Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Protean e-Gov Technologies, RailTel and Bharat Electronics.
Sri Lankan outlets reported earlier in July that bidders’ prices had exceeded the Indian grant, prompting a review of the project’s funding.
