Smartmatic wins Comelec bidding over lowest bidder! – The Manila Times manilatimes.net - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from manilatimes.net Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
CONTROVERSIAL technology provider Smartmatic Corp.-Total Information Management Corp. (Smartmatic-TIM) has won the bidding for the P660.741-million bidding called by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to refurbish its almost 100,000 vote counting machines (VCMs) for the 2022 polls.
Smartmatic-TIM clinched the contract after the only other bidder, Pivot International Inc.-Power Serve Inc. (PII-PSI), was disqualified by Special Bids and Awards Committee-Automated Elections Systems (SBAC-AES).
Documents showed that PII-PSI’s bid of P490 million is below the P170,741,660.47 budget ceiling of P660,741,660.47 and lower than the P637,443,308.45 offer of Smartmatic-TIM.
In its notice of disqualification dated December 11, the committee informed PII-PSI that it was disqualified because it failed to indicate a “zero” or “dash” in column 8 of Annex G-2 pursuant to Section 32.2.1 of the updated 2016 revised implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of Republic Act (RA) 9184 or