A court decision has prevented the Polish Agency for Development and Modernization of Agriculture (ARiMR) from signing a deal with Kraków-based Comarch, which had originally won a tender for the upkeep and development of one of Poland’s largest IT systems – OFSA, which manages subsidy payments to farmers.

The winner of the tender was selected based on price and its solution to a test problem. Asseco, Poland’s largest IT firm, filed a court claim earlier this year complaining that Comarch had failed to solve the test problem correctly. If Asseco ends up with the contract, it stands to earn nearly zł.41 million.

When original bids were opened at the end of 2012, Asseco came in fifth, while the top of the list belonged to yet another consortium comprising firms IT Works and Almaviva. In February 2012, however, ARiMR disqualified the offer, and Comarch was pushed to the top of the list.

Asseco has proven it doesn’t take blows lying down on several occasions. Last year the WIG20-listed company’s president, Adam Góral, wrote a letter to Prime Minister Donald Tusk, after Polish insurer PZU, in which the Treasury holds a significant stake, selected an American contractor for a major IT system worth hundreds of millions of złoty.

“We are taking away our own chance to build a Polish Microsoft,” he wrote to the prime minister at the time.

Beata Socha