COA raises red flags on Talisay’s award of most infra projects to lone bidder

The Commission on Audit (COA) has flagged infrastructure projects in Talisay City that were mostly awarded by the Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) to a lone bidder.

In the 2021 COA observation and recommendations to the LGU, the state auditors said "that the 20 procurement projects were all participated by a lone bidder with total contract costs of ₱113,475,412.19."

Though the COA clarified that the LGU has complied with the requirement of the procurement law on the posting of the bid invitations on the PhilGEPS website and at the City’s bulletin boards, it found it strange that only few bidders "were interested to participate the infrastructure projects of the City given the several construction companies based in Cebu."

Also, based on the Procurement Monitoring Report of the city, there were 21 projects in Talisay that were bid out by its BAC which totaled to ₱261,225,392.08 in 2021.

"We noted, however, that some bidders were repeatedly awarded with procurement contracts," said COA.

In a table presented by the state auditors, from the 11 contractors who participated in the different bidding process, there were at least three bidders that received 9 to 16 projects.

"As can be gleaned in the above table, the Tuanson Construction (31.64%), Gleymark (20.28%), Jocyn (14.70%) andVJ Sison (11.04%) already made up the 77.66 percent of the total amount of projects bid out during the year," the state auditors observed.

COA said it does not question the capability and the capacity of the repeated bidders to perform and having sole bidder in a particular project may happen sometimes.

However, it will raise suspicion and cast doubt on the integrity of the bidding process if several projects are awarded to a lone bidder or bidders.

"...it would give impression that they are favored by the City, hence, in order to eliminate this, and as well as to avoid the impression of fixing the bidding process, there is a need to adopt additional measures to ensure that the spirit of competitiveness and equality, which are the basic tenets of the Government Procurement Act, will be attained," COA said.

The state auditors recommended to the city to create its own website and post the procurement projects that the LGU will undertake. It also further recommended to direct the BAC secretariat in coordination with the Public Information Office to have additional measures for the advertising bid invitations like posting it to the LGU's social media account like Facebook since most people have access to the social media and through this there will be a venue to entice prospective bidders or suppliers to participate in the bidding process.

Another initiative the auditors suggested is for the city to contact directly the suppliers by sending out multiple emails to a number of companies; search in the internet sample list of companies in Cebu or request to the Securities and Exchange Commission of all the construction companies operating in Cebu and make this as a catalogue for reference.

COA said that during the exit conference, the LGU promised to write an explanation or justification but "to no avail" as of March 10, 2022 when the audit team made a follow up letter.