Metro Manila, Philippines — The country has two new laws that would make bidding rules for government projects more efficient and beneficial to the public, and another that would crack down on financial fraud.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. touted the new laws during the ceremonial signing at Malacañan Palace on July 20 days ahead of the State of the Nation Address (SONA).
“We have just signed into law two new bills that will move us closer to attaining a strong, more responsive, and efficient bureaucracy, and to establishing safeguards for the financial rights and welfare of every Filipino,” Marcos said in a speech after the ceremonial signing.
He first signed Republic Act (RA) 12009 or the New Government Procurement Act, which lawmakers said would curb corruption in government transactions. It amended RA 9184 or the Government Procurement Reform Act.
Marcos said in his speech that the updated law would cut the procurement period from three to two months.
It would also introduce the “most economically advantageous responsive bid” concept and the conduct of strategic procurement planning, the chief executive explained.
The president said the new law does away with the practice of awarding projects to the lowest bidder. Instead, it “emphasizes not only the lowest price, but other factors like quality, sustainability, and social impact.”
He added that the change also allows “procuring entities to consider factors beyond price, such as technical specifications, delivery time, and post-award services.”
There is also the sustainable factor, the president said, “which encourages environmentally friendly practices that consider the lifecycle cost of goods and services, including energy efficiency, recyclability, and environmental impact.”
The other new law is RA 12010 or the Anti-Financial Account Scamming Act, which would require financial institutions to carry out safeguards to protect the accounts of Filipinos.
The law also penalizes money muling activities, social engineering schemes, economic sabotage, and other offenses involving financial accounts.
“I hope that, through this law, we can deter the majority of the financial scams that we have been seeing while at the same time fostering greater trust in our digitization efforts,” Marcos said.
It can be recalled that the SIM Card Registration Act of 2022, the first law Marcos signed, which mandated the registration of SIM (subscriber identification module) cards before activation. One of its main goals was to stop text and online scams. Lawmakers, however, have been questioning the continuous proliferation of such cybercrimes.
