Since 1998, the Province of PEI has advertised and distributed tenders using the national MERX service, which includes tenders for many other Canadian jurisdictions. With the recently announced fee increases for MERX, however, the Province feels an alternative to using that service was appropriate, particularly for suppliers interested in submitting bids on PEI's low-value tenders.

Suppliers to the PEI Government will now have two choices. They can access PEI tenders directly on the Government's homepage at www.gov.pe.ca, or they can continue to use MERX, where PEI tenders can be identified by using PEIGOV* as a MERX Opportunity Search. Suppliers using MERX will be directed to www.gov.pe.ca where they can obtain the official bid documents at no charge. There will be no change to the methods used to distribute construction tender documents.

The new service is also available to other PEI organizations who wish to advertise and distribute tenders electronically.