Kathmandu, Feb. 22 -- Five international security printing companies have submitted bids for Nepal's multibillion-rupee e-passport contract. The bid documents were opened on Friday on the premises of the Department of Passports.

According to Tirtha Raj Aryal, director general at the Department of Passports (DOP), three of the five firms have submitted bids for the first package, and four have submitted documents for the second.

IDEMIA has been given the printing permit from the time of Nepal's transition from handwritten passports to machine-readable ones in 2010, and even now when the country has transitioned to e-passports, also known as biometric passports.

According to the Department of Passports, Malaysia-based IRIS Corporation Be...