Bidders for public tenders who fail to comply with administrative requirements in the tendering process will be given an extra two working days to rectify their position instead of being eliminated from the tendering process, Finance Minister Tonio Fenech said today.

He said the decision had been taken as part of a process to simplify the tendering process and to ensure that the government was able to take the best value for money from the services or products it sought.

He explained that at present, bids sometimes had administrative requirements that were missing, such as a signature, or accounts not having been filed properly. As a result, such bids were dismissed. Sometimes, he said, the government ended up with only one fully compliant bidder out of six.

"The government is sometimes losing the best value offers because of some simple administrative mistake," Mr Fenech said.

16 per cent of government expenditure went on products and service bought through tender, he said, and it was therefore important that the government had all the competitive bids it needed.

He stressed that the two-day grace period was for administrative purposes only and bidders could not change their offers or conditions.

There will be a €50 fine for each administrative mistake.