ICV
Check your ICV score before you bid.
In Qatar, a higher ICV score lets a rival price a bid higher and still win. See how the mechanism works, what it's worth in today's market, and check your own gap before you price a tender.
An In-Country Value (ICV) certificate scores your company from 0 to 100 on how much of your spending stays in Qatar. A Tawteen-approved certifier issues it, and buyers read it straight off the certificate.
What the certifier looks at
The certifier follows your money: Qatari payroll, local suppliers and subcontractors, training, supplier development, and assets you invest in inside the country. You can earn extra credit for Qatarization, exports, R&D and sustainability.
The score is not fixed. It changes when you recertify, when your spending changes, and when Qatar changes the formula. Qatar changed it recently, which is why scores across the market are moving (more on that below).
So two companies with similar costs can hold very different scores. One spent in the categories the certifier weighs most. The other didn't. Only the certificate shows it.
How ICV changes who wins
Qatar doesn't award a tender to the lowest price. It awards it to the lowest Financial Outcome:
Financial Outcome = Bid Price × (1 − ICV%)
A higher ICV score shrinks your Financial Outcome. So a rival with a better certificate can ask for more money and still beat you.
You won't see this in your own numbers. No cost sheet has an "ICV discount" line. You can price sharply and still lose, and the reason shows up only in the buyer's evaluation.
That doesn't mean you should chase the highest score at any cost. It means ICV is part of your price. Manage it the way you manage your price.
Illustrative example with round numbers, not from our data:
Bidder A
QAR 10,500,000 bid, 35% ICV
Outcome: QAR 6,825,000
Bidder B
QAR 10,000,000 bid, 20% ICV
Outcome: QAR 8,000,000
Bidder A asks for QAR 500,000 more and still wins. Its higher ICV score puts its Financial Outcome below Bidder B's. Below, you'll see what real score gaps are worth today.
Now try your own numbers. Enter your ICV score and a competitor's to see how much room the gap gives them, or you.
See what an ICV gap is worth
Type your ICV score and a competitor's. This never leaves your browser.
What today's spread is worth
Among companies with a current ICV score, a bidder at the median (26.3) is up against a rival at the 75th percentile (36.5). That rival can bid 16.1% higher and still come out ahead on Financial Outcome.
Widen the comparison to the tails of the distribution and the gap grows further. A bidder at the 10th percentile (13.6) facing one at the 90th (51.3) is conceding a 77.4% price cushion before either side has priced a single line item. That's the range a company can be sitting anywhere inside, depending only on how current and how well-built its certificate is.
Tracking the same companies from 2024 to 2025, median ICV moved from 15.3 to 24.1 — worth roughly 11.6% on the Financial Outcome formula above. A supplier who hasn't recertified since 2024 is quietly bidding from a worse position than a year ago, even at an unchanged price.
The full mechanism and more of today's spread are worked through in what your ICV score is actually worth in a Qatar tender and the ICV bar moved .
Method: current-score spread across companies, each counted once at its most recent certified score from 2025 onward — scores issued before then predate Qatar's cost-over-cost formula change and aren't on the same scale. The cohort figures track only companies scored in both years, so a growing sample can't manufacture the trend. The ICV weighting actually applied is set by each tender's own documents and is not always the full ICV percentage; these figures illustrate the mechanism, not a quote for any specific bid.
A lapsed score still costs you
A grace period can keep you eligible to submit a bid after your ICV certificate lapses. It does nothing for the score itself — once bids are compared, a lapsed or outdated certificate leaves you bidding from a worse position on every tender you enter until it's current again. To bid while in grace, a supplier typically needs a letter from its certifier confirming recertification is already under way; a lapsed certificate with nothing behind it is treated the same as no certificate at all.
It's tempting to read a grace period as purely administrative — a filing window to close before anyone notices. The more consequential effect is in the evaluation itself. Grace protects a supplier's right to submit a bid. It says nothing about what score gets used once that bid is compared against a rival's, which is where the price cushion shown above actually applies.
2027: mandatory for government tenders
ICV certification is already mandatory in Qatar's Energy Sector. Qatar has set early 2027 as the point it becomes mandatory for government tenders more broadly — and the bar is rising before that deadline arrives, not after it.
That timing matters for two separate reasons. First, a certificate takes time to build and to certify — it isn't something a company can produce in the weeks before a deadline without the underlying local spend already in place. Second, the cost-over-cost formula change already reshaping today's spread of scores means the companies moving early are the ones setting the level everyone else will be measured against once certification is compulsory. Waiting until 2027 to start doesn't just cost time; it means competing against a market that has already moved.
Before you bid, check
- Your ICV certificate is current, not just inside its grace period — grace keeps you eligible to bid, it doesn't keep your score competitive.
- The ICV weighting set out in this specific tender's documents, not a rule of thumb — the multiplier applied can vary by tender.
- Whether your certificate predates the cost-over-cost formula change — an older score isn't measured on the same scale as one issued after it.
- How your score compares to the bidders you usually compete against, not the market median — the median tells you where the market sits, not where your actual rivals sit.
- Your recertification date, so a renewal doesn't lapse mid-tender and leave you bidding on a stale score.
- Whether pricing higher and certifying further beats pricing lower on a weak score — the calculator above turns that into a single number before you commit to either strategy.
Questions bidders ask
What is an ICV score?
An In-Country Value (ICV) score is a number between 0 and 100 that measures how much of a company's spending stays inside Qatar — local labour, goods, services, training and investment, plus credit for Qatarization, exports, R&D and sustainability. A Tawteen-approved certifier issues it on a certification cycle, and it's a published fact about the company, not a private estimate a buyer forms on their own.
How does ICV affect who wins a Qatar tender?
Qatar evaluates bids on Financial Outcome = Bid Price × (1 − ICV%), and the lowest outcome wins — not the lowest price. A higher ICV score divides the bid price down further, so a well-certified bidder can charge more and still beat a lower-scored rival on paper. The gap between any two scores converts arithmetically into a price advantage.
What happens if my ICV certificate lapses?
A grace period can keep you eligible to submit a bid, usually if your certifier confirms recertification is already under way. It does not protect your score once bids are compared. A lapsed or outdated certificate can leave you bidding from a worse position on every tender you enter until it's renewed.
Is ICV certification mandatory in Qatar?
It's already mandatory in the Energy Sector. Qatar has set early 2027 as the point ICV certification becomes mandatory for government tenders more broadly, and scores are already shifting in the market ahead of that date.
How do I check a competitor's ICV score?
Use the calculator on this page to see what an ICV gap is worth in price, using two scores you type in yourself — nothing you enter leaves your browser. For your own bids and named competitors' real, current scores, sign up free.
See your competitors' real ICV scores
The calculator above works off two numbers you type in. Sign up and you get the real ones — your own ICV history and the tenders you actually bid on, benchmarked against the rivals you actually compete against, not a market median.