THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) yesterday declared a failed bidding after no company attempted to bag the P600 million project for the supply of 10,000 additional vote counting machines (VCMs) to be used in the May 2022 polls.
Speaking at the opening of bids for the lease of precinct-based Optical Mark Reader (OMR) or Optical Scan (OPSCAN) System or Voting/Counting Machine (VCM) project, Comelec –
Special Bids and Awards Committee (SBAC) chairman Allen Abaya said no entity submitted bid proposals for the project.
“Considering that there are no bids submitted in today’s opening of bids, the SBAC hereby declares a failure of bidding,” said Abaya.
He related that Smartmatic-Total Information Management 2016 Inc. (SMMT-TIM) was the lone company that purchased the bidding documents last August 13 but “the said company did not submit any bid proposal.”
Abaya said the SMMT-TM’s authorized representative Filipinas Ordoño has written the poll body that the approved budget of P600,503,500.00 is insufficient for the project.
This, it said, is due to the effects of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic to the global supply chain servicing the electronic sector.
“(The pandemic) has led to an acute global shortage in electronic components, which has driven up costs to unprecedented levels of 20% to 25%; and a sharp rise in logistics cost, which had hit 200% in the last year,” said Ordoño.
“We have given the procurement documents a thorough study, trying to find ways to comply with all the requirements within the approved budget. Unfortunately, we have determined that the budget is not sufficient to cover all of Comelec’s conditions stated in the TOR (Terms of Reference),” she said.
