Disqualified Sino firm to join P6.5-B PCSO bid

MANILA, Philippines — Five members of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) special bids and awards committee (SBAC) resigned after the state lottery firm reversed its decision to disqualify a Chinese company from participating in the agency’s P6.5-billion Nationwide Online Lottery System (NOLS) project.

Josefina Sarsonas-Aguas, Raymond Samarita, Ariel de Ocampo, Omar Bagul and Leah Christine Jimenez said they tendered their resignation last month to uphold the “cold neutrality” of the PCSO SBAC.

“This irrevocable resignation is to ensure and maintain the continuity, transparency and integrity of the procurement activities for the 2021 PCSO Lottery Project and, in addition, to uphold the cold neutrality of an impartial bids and awards committee by ensuring and preserving the appearance of fairness, objectivity and independence in the conduct of bid activities,” they said in a June 25 letter.

Request denied

Their resignation followed a heated bidding row involving Chinese firm JV Genlot—composed of United Technic Corp., Digi-Specs IT Corp. and Genlot Game Technology Co. Ltd.—which was originally disqualified from bidding for a lease contract of the P6.5-billion PCSO Lottery Project.

Genlot is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Telling Telecommunication Holding Co., Ltd., which supplies mobile phones to China Mobile and China Unicom.

But JV Genlot was disqualified from participating in bidding procedures on April 21 after it was found that it submitted an expired mayor’s permit and failed to translate supporting eligibility documents.

Under Republic Act No. 9184, or the Government Procurement Reform Act, eligibility requirements are set by the Government Procurement Policy Board (GPPB) and must be met by bidders before they are allowed to participate in future bidding procedures.

JV Genlot filed a request for reconsideration before the PCSO SBAC that was denied on June 9 but was later reversed by the PCSO board on June 24.

But on June 23, the GPPB pointed out to the PCSO that the submission of an expired mayor’s permit was “not complete and sufficient on its face, and may not be cured at any stage of the bidding process and must perforce be deemed absent.”

Long-pending project

It added that JV Genlot’s failure to translate their documents to English did not comply with the requirements stated under RA 9184, and that the law “cannot be supplanted, in any matter or extent, by the PCSO Manual of Corporate Governance.”

The Inquirer tried to reach PCSO general manager Royina Garma for comment but she has not responded at press time.

The NOLS project has been a long-pending project aimed at centralized technology systems to replace the PCSO’s 20-year-old lottery system for Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.

The project was originally estimated to cost P10.9-billion in 2017 but that was reduced to P6.5 billion.

The project has also been stalled several times, particularly after a Malaysian bidder filed a court case that was eventually settled in arbitration.

In July 2017, Presiding Judge Maximo de Leon of the Makati City Regional Trial Court Branch 143 granted a temporary restraining order in favor of Philippine Gaming Management Corp. against the NOLS bidding participated in by at least 17 firms who bought bid documents.

The bidding would have been the first to be conducted by the PCSO because previous systems were acquired through a lease agreement only. INQ