TWO days before Christmas in 2008, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) placed an order with the Philippine International Trading Corp (PITC) for five K-9 dogs to help in its operations against drug dealers.
Fourteen years after, neither fur nor paw print of the animals worth P1.11 million have shown up.
Separate orders for laboratory equipment, fabricated armory, and renovation of its office building in 2009 have likewise not materialized.
The 2022 audit report on the Philippine International Trading Corp (PITC) showed PDEA is not alone in its situation as there are 13 other government agencies that are still waiting for their orders of equipment or structures to arrive.
“Fund transfers from CYs 2014-2019 on procurement projects amounting to at least P1.094 billion tagged as ‘ongoing implementation’ in CY 2021 are still to be implemented in CY 2022,” the Commission on Audit said.
Delivery appears bleak as the audit team found that among the reasons for non-delivery were “contract suspension, termination, or extension.”
Among PTIC’s unsatisfied clients are the Department of Health who transferred P156.78 million to the state-procurement arm in 2016 for the construction of 36 provincial medicine warehouses, the Philippine Army with three construction and improvement contracts worth P394.12 million dating back to 2019, and the Food and Drug Administration which placed an order for information technology equipment in 2017 totaling P142.38 million.
Likewise pending are the Philippine National Police’s order for 114 sniper rifles 7.62mm and 305 night vision goggles with a combined value of P118.17 million.
“Some contracts were awarded as early as 2011, 2013 and 2015. Also, worth noting is that some of these projects do not involve the construction of infrastructures that may imply stages of work completion. Nevertheless, the considerable amount of time these projects remained unimplemented could not be ignored,” auditors noted.
The PTIC management said the delayed orders were all that was left of more than P13 billion unimplemented procurement, of which P11.8 billion have been either been returned to the source agencies or remitted to the Bureau of Treasury.
It informed the COA that coordination with the 14 agencies is in progress to determine if they still prefer to proceed with the procurement or not.
