Kathmandu, July 25 -- The Department of Passports has invited two German companies to sign a new passport deal to print and supply 6.4 million biometric passports or e-passports.

After the Public Procurement Review Committee cleared the deck, the department, under the aegis of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Tuesday issued Notification of Letter of Acceptance to the two German companies-Veridos GmbH and Muehlbauer ID Service. With this, the dominance of the French company, IDEMIA, at DoP has come to an end, as the German companies will take over the responsibility of supplying the secure e-passports to Nepali citizens.

"We have issued the notifications to the two German companies-Muhlbauer for work under package one and Veridos for ...