We are currently bidding on a project in Singapore and have been asked to register with their e-Procurement portal GeBIZ. The initial registration process required that a company officer provide their passport number on the registration form. We are now being asked to provide a copy of the passport. For obvious personal privacy and security concerns, the executive is reluctant to provide this copy. Has anyone had previous experience with this organization?
GEBiz Eprocurement Security & Privacy Concerns
Answers
Dennis,
Yes. Not unlike in banking where there is a "know your customer" mandate, or in the US where every company needs a registered agent, Singapore wants to know with whom they're dealing. Upside is that, unlike in the US, at least they're not asking for your social :-)
Singapore was very easy to deal with in this manner. In Japan it wasn't an option (at least, historically). We had to have an agent on the ground or go through a broker who took the "know your customer"
Remember that SG doesn't have access to your corp files, etc. Given that, it doesn't seem like a particularly high bar to me for their reasonable need for assurance that they're not dealing with a boiler-room operation--even those can get "good standing" certs. That, and they have always been a treat to work with; non-complex, low overhead, one stop shopping, etc.
Cheers
KP
Keith - thank you very much for the feedback related to your experience.
Dennis
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Strategy