Glossary · Words that travel differently

L1, L2 and L3 rank bidders by price in Indian and wider South Asian public tendering: L1 is the compliant bid at the lowest price, L2 the next, and so on. The L stands for lowest, and being L1 is the usual precondition for award in a price-decided tender, not a guarantee of it, because the bid must also clear the technical evaluation. In tenders where the government sells rather than buys, the same convention runs upward as H1 for the highest offer. European and Latin American systems rank on the award criteria as a whole rather than on price alone, so they have no equivalent word.