SEN. Francis Tolentino yesterday bared that the controversial laptops supplied to public school teachers cost around P27,000 from its source in China but were bought by the Department of Education for about P58,300 apiece, or a markup of nearly 50 percent.
Tolentino, chairperson of the Senate Blue Ribbon committee, said that based on documents he obtained, the Dell Latitude 3420 BTX laptops that came from China were priced at around P27,000 per unit.
During the resumption of the hearing on the laptops, Tolentino said he did not want to reveal this information but was compelled to after lawyer Bong Bernas of VST Tecs Philippines Inc. tried to justify the price of the laptops supplied to the DepEd during the presentation of the Commission on Audit findings on the “pricey and outdated laptops.”
“Regarding our price, we have increased the price because, for example, we have added on-site support in the schools which will last for three years,” Bernas told the panel.
Bernas tried to explain further, but was cut short by Tolentino, who said a number of the laptops were not accepted by public school teachers from the provinces of Aurora and Kalinga due to problems on computer speed, among others.
Tolentino said he got hold of the document, which came from VST Tecs Philippines Inc., that shows in detail the transactions entered into by the joint venture with the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management, which was tapped by the DepEd to purchase P2.4 billion worth of laptops for use of public school teachers in the blended learning program.
“The origin of the laptops, all of them came from the People’s Republic of China. I am not saying that they are inferior but the landed cost, even if you add the customs duties, will not be more than P27,000 per piece,” he said in a mix of Filipino and English.
He added: “We can see here (in the document) the price. I didn’t want to bring this up but you (Bernas) opened up the computation a while ago. It’s really far (from you price), the value-added tax is here, and if you sum it up, it is really priced low.”
Job Aguirre, supervising auditor of the DepEd Audit Group, said anything purchased by the government that is 10 percent higher than its market value is considered “pricey” or overpriced.
“Per COA Circular 2012-003 dated October 19, 2012, anything that is in excess by 10 percent of the prevailing and current market price is considered excessive,” Aguirre said.
He said that in May 2021, the same month the DepEd approved the purchase of the laptops, the agency conducted a bidding for a mid-range laptop with a unit price of P45,531.20.
“Per PS-DBM’s procurement, the price of the mid-range laptops is lower while the specs thereof are higher than the laptop purchased by the Department (of Education) during the same period,” Aguirre said.
Aguirre said another reason the COA had to declare the laptops as overpriced was when the DepEd again tapped PS-DBM to procure “brand new laptops with faster Intel Core i5 processor 8th generation” with a unit price of P32,500.
He said the same Dell laptop delivered by the joint venture was priced between P22,490 to P25,000 at a local computer shop.
Aside from the laptops being overpriced, Aguirre said they have also received negative feedback on the laptops, including slow processor, and that they have not met DepEd requirements.
“The Audit Team recommended that Fraud Audit be conducted on the complaint emailed by an Alternative Learning System teacher to the Presidential Complaint Center, Office of the President on the same issue,” he said.
He added that out of the 2,378 units allocated for the DepEd Central Office, 1,678 of them are still undistributed and are stocked at its Asset Management Division as of August 17, 2022.
Tolentino terminated the hearing after five meetings and said any resource person who felt alluded to during the inquiries but were not given the chance to refute them will be given a chance to submit a memorandum to the committee, with the assistance of their legal counsels, to rebut the allegations.
He gave them until November 4 to submit the memorandum.
“Then after 15 days which would be on November 19, we will come up with a committee report,” he said.
