Rules followed, no overprice in PPE purchases–officials

THE chairman of the Commission on Audit (COA) and a former official of the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM) on Wednesday told the House of Representatives that the Executive Department adhered to the procurement rules and there was no overpricing for the purchase of supplies for Covid-19 response last year.

At the hearing of the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability on alleged overpriced Covid-19 supplies, COA Chairman Michael Aguinaldo said the Palace had the power to ignore Republic Act 9184 or the Government Procurement Reform Act because of the passage of Bayanihan 1.

“But nonetheless, they still apply provisions of RA 9184 even if they could have totally ignored them. The President is allowed to order procurement expeditiously. While the government could have done away with that, there has been an effort to put order in the process, by applying rules under the Government Procurement Policy Board [GPPB] requirement,” Aguinaldo noted.

“The only requirement was that it [the procurement] should be advantageous to the government. So we were actually surprised that they decided to apply the rules on emergency procurement as defined under RA 9184,” Aguinaldo said.

RA 11469 or Bayanihan 1 or the Bayanihan to Heal As One Act authorizes the President to adopt and implement measures needed to respond to the crisis brought by Covid-19 as the need arises, in the most expeditious manner, as exemptions from the provisions of RA 9184 and other relevant laws.

‘No overprice’—liong

IN the same hearing, Deputy Ombudsman Warren Liong, a former director of the PS-DBM, said the purchase of Covid-19 supplies was not overpriced.

“Were the PPES purchased by the government last year overpriced? No. The suggested retail price of the DOH was P28 and the mask procured by the government was P27.72,” he added.

Earlier, the COA flagged the transfer of P42-billion funds to PS-DBM from the Department of Health for the purchase of emergency supplies last year.

The controversial Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corp. secured P8.6 billion worth of the government contracts for the PPES in 2020 and P2.9 billion in 2021. Pharmally was registered in September 2019 with the Securities and Exchange Commission with a paid-up capital of only P625,000.

Liong said the government was looking for a supplier who could immediately deliver the urgently needed supply, and “it turned out that Pharmally have 500,000 supplies that time.”

“Allegations that came up during the past week that there were ghost deliveries? Not true. Their face masks are readily available. All procured items were delivered. The DOH, IATF can attest to that,” Liong added.

Liong also explained that PSDBM followed the procedure for emergency procurement under the Bayanihan 1.

“Under Bayanihan 1 we were allowed to directly negotiate but we still underwent market price analysis,” he added.

‘Immediate protection’

HEALTH Secretary Francisco Duque III, in the same hearing, said the government has no “luxury of time” to wait until the supply stabilizes.

“We want immediate protection for our health-care workers,” Duque said.

“We thought if we did not do what we did—emergency procurement—then in all probability the number of deaths would rise further, And not only that, the healthcare system will collapse,” he added, partly in Filipino.

For his part, COA chairman Aguinaldo said there was no COA report on overpricing of emegercy supplies.

“There’s no statement to that, the observations related more to inventory management than overpricing. So it is not right to say that the COA reported that there was an overpricing. Because nothing was said in the report,” Aguinaldo said.

The Senate is also investigating the procurement of allegedly overpriced Covid-19 emergency supplies by the PS-DBM.