MANILA, Philippines — The joint venture between two of the country’s top lotto service providers is moving closer to bagging the five-year Philippine Lottery System (PLS) contract of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) after the only other bidder – a Chinese-backed firm – was disqualified for a third time.
In an abstract of bids report done by the PCSO Special Bids and Awards Committee, the P5.8-billion bid of Philippine Gaming Management Corp. (PGMC) and the SM Group’s Pacific Online Systems Corp. (POSC) for the lease, operation and maintenance of 6,500 fixed and customized lottery terminals of the nationwide lotto games for a period of five years emerged as the lone eligible bid.
The PCSO-SBAC filed the bid abstract after the third disqualification of the other group that submitted a bid for the contract, the joint venture of Shenzhen, China-based Genlot Game Technology Co., Ltd. and local firms Digi-Specs IT Corp. and Philippine United Technic Corp. (PUTC).
Last July 21, the PCSO-SBAC disqualified the bid of the Genlot-led group due to the absence of the required original and notarized board secretary’s certificate and board resolution authorizing their representative, Ryan Wong, to represent the group before the PCSO.
The Genlot consortium was previously disqualified after the SBAC found the mayor’s permit of a member of the consortium, identified as PUTC, to be expired during the time of bidding, and when it was found during the opening of the bids submission last April 21 that its documents lacked English translations certified by the Philippine embassy.
The bid of the PGMC-POSC joint venture, which also includes US gaming firm International Lottery & Totalizator Systems Inc., (ILTSI), was the only one of two submitted bids that passed the preliminary and subsequent technical and financial bid evaluation conducted by the PCSO-SBAC.
The PCSO had an approved budget of P6.15 billion for the PLS project.
PGMC is a subsidiary of listed holding firm Berjaya Philippines Inc. while POSC is controlled by the SM Group of the late tycoon Henry Sy Sr. through its listed gaming arm Premium Leisure Corp.