One of the major professional requirements in Public procurement is to buy at the lowest cost (L1) ,for the given technical requirement. One way to meet this condition is to generate enough competition in the market by calling number of offers. The more the number of Techno-commercially acceptable offers lower would be the L1 offer.

Opposite to this method is the  Single Tender Enquiry which implies purchasing without generating competition. In fact, in STE only one offer is solicited. One party is contacted and formalities are completed only with this party.

Naturally, in Public buying where cash outflow for procurement has to be reasonable STE may lead to situations where a purchaser may have to shell out more money than would have been in case of many tenders situation.

Thus , STE should be adopted in exceptional cases only.

Some examples of SINGLE TENDER PURCHASE:-
 

Augmentation of existing facility Standardization of components and spare parts of existing plant and equipment Single source purchase of attachments for an equipment to fulfill warranty condition Proprietary item to be purchased from a particular source Proprietary article certificate ,as required, is to be provided by the user organisation while making single source purchase Single source purchasing may become necessary in emergency cases like natural disaster