Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 22) – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) Special Bids and Awards Committee (SBAC) said it is open to the possibility of extending the deadline for the submission of bids for the 2025 Automated Election System.
“We will discuss on the possibility of extending the submission of bids considering the tightness of the… particularly on the renewal of licenses,” SBAC Chairperson Allen Francis Abaya said at the pre-bid conference on Friday.
“We will be issuing bid bulletins in the event we are extending the date of submission of bids,” he added.
Abaya was responding to concerns raised by prospective bidders for the Full Automation System with Transparency Audit/Count (FASTrAC) project.
Representatives of Unisyn Voting Solutions and AMA Group Holdings Corp. earlier said the deadlines were tight given the number of required documents.
The SBAC reminded companies that the first posting for the FASTrAC project was up on Oct. 27 and they are already in the second round of bidding.
Appeals for the extension came after Abaya revealed that no company purchased bidding documents for the ₱18.8-billion project so far.
“As of today, no bidder has yet purchased our bidding documents,” Abaya said.
Present at the pre-bid conference were representatives of Unisyn, Miru Systems Co. Ltd., Dominion Voting Systems and International Lottery and Totalizer Systems, Inc.
Observers included SMMT-TIM 2016 or Smartmatic, Indra Sistemas, and the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections.
Companies have until Dec. 25 to submit via email their questions or clarifications on the 2025 AES project.
The SBAC opened a second round of public bidding after it declared a failure in the first round last Dec. 12.
The lone bidder, the joint venture led by Miru Systems Co. Ltd., was declared ineligible for not meeting the legal requirement of the contract.
The SBAC said the deadline for Submission of Bids is Jan. 4 at 9 a.m., followed by the Opening of Bids at 10:30 a.m. at the Palacio del Gobernador Building in Intramuros, Manila.
