Proposed 3-point amendment on the Procurement law

A bill was recently filed by Senator Chiz Escudero seeking to amend certain provisions of the Government Procurement Reform Act (GPRA) or R.A. 9184.

Senate Bill No. 1963 seeks to address the weaknesses of the current procurement law particularly along three areas, namely:

- putting under the coverage of RA 9184 the procurement of infrastructure projects, goods and consulting services funded by loan or credit under the Official Development Act, RA No. 8182, as amended;

- strengthen and advance transparency by mandating the posting of decisions of the Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) relative to criteria, ratings and calculations of bids as well as all other bids, responsive or otherwise, on the procuring agency's website or that of the Government Procurement Policy Board (GPPB). This will bolster and reinforce accountability of public officials by making public how BAC members decide and why.

- lessen the discretion of procuring entities specifically in the consideration of single calculated/rated and responsive bid submissions by subjecting it to the approval of the GPPB; and the use of observers. The current rule on allowing a single calculated/rated and responsive bid submission opens up an avenue of a rig bidding through consensus among bidders in a particular procuring entity. On the hand, the proposed amendment to the attendance of private observers is to limit the number of times they can be invited in the bidding of procuring entities. Observers who are regularly invited in public biddings have a tendency to become friendly and sometimes become cohorts in anomalous biddings.

According to Senator Escudero, the proposed amendments will address the problems and issues resulting from the highly publicized ZTE and Cyber Ed projects.