MANILA — The Commission on Audit (COA) has called out the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM) over its failure to implement last year’s audit recommendation to blacklist the supplier of the “pricey” and “outdated” laptops worth P2.4 billion for the Department of Education (DepEd).
In its 2022 annual audit report on the PS-DBM, the COA noted that based on the validation conducted by its audit team, the previous recommendation to come up with a resolution on the “termination of contracts or blacklisting of suppliers” in connection with the controversial laptop procurement deal was still “not implemented” by the PS-DBM as of Dec. 31 last year.
“The blacklisting and termination review committee has not yet conducted blacklisting proceedings over the subject contracts, thus, a resolution on the termination of contracts or blacklisting of suppliers has not been issued,” the COA said.
This was contrary to the PS-DBM management’s claim that the resolution on the termination of contract and the blacklisting of the supplier was already submitted to the head of procuring entity – in this case, Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte – for final approval.
The COA’s remark can be found under the “Status of Implementation of Prior Year’s Audit Recommendations” section of the 2022 annual audit report.
The DepEd, under the previous administration, hit the headlines after it was flagged by the COA for the procurement of “pricey” and “outdated” laptops” worth P2.4 billion in 2021 for supposed distribution to public school teachers. It was later revealed that the controversial procurement was carried out by the PS-DBM.
In its 2021 management letter to the PS-DBM, the COA recommended the creation of an investigation committee to conduct proceedings and “determine the imposition of administrative sanctions” against all PS officials and employees responsible for the formulation of technical specifications and evaluation of the supplier’s compliance to legal and technical requirements.
The COA also recommended that the committee “immediately conduct termination and blacklisting proceedings for the aforementioned projects” and submit a “resolution on the termination of contracts or the blacklistings of suppliers, if warranted.”
In its 2022 audit report, the state auditor noted that while the PS-DBM was able to create the investigation committee, no resolution on the blacklisting of supplier was issued.
The COA, nonetheless, noted that the framework agreement with the supplier eventually expired on Sept. 6 last year.
The agency had earlier said that the supplier – the joint venture of Sunwest Construction and Development Corp., LDLA Marketing and Trading Inc. and VST ECS Philippines Inc. – was apparently favored by PS-DBM over three other bidders despite its failure to meet specifications for the project, particularly the required clock speed and processor cache for the laptop units.
The COA said the joint venture should have been disqualified outright from the bidding as its offered product, a Dell Latitude 3420, was equipped with an outdated processor, an 11th-generation Intel Core Celeron that has 1.8 gigahertz (GHz) clock speed and 4 megabytes (MB) of processing cache.
The agency added that this was a deviation from the technical specifications earlier agreed upon by the DepEd and PS-DBM as provided in their memorandum of agreement dated Dec. 22, 2017, which states that the laptops to be procured should at least have 1.9 GHz base speed and 2 MB processing cache.
In a separate 2021 audit report, the COA also admonished the DepEd for accepting the PS-DBM’s recommended approved budget for the contract of P58,300 per unit “despite the fact that the estimated price based on the DepEd’s approved annual procurement plan and agency procurement request is P35,046.50 only.”
The COA said the items were “pricey” for an entry-level type of laptop, thus resulting in the decreased number of procured units to 39,583 from the original target of 68,500 units. (philstar)
