Gwen to Davide: Explain price disparity in equipment purchase

CEBU, Philippines - Former Cebu governor now third district Representative Gwendolyn Garcia has called on Governor Hilario Davide III to explain the price difference in Capitol’s purchase of heavy equipment recently questioned for alleged irregularities.

This after Davide blamed his political rivals over the issue of overpricing in Capitol’s purchase of heavy equipment worth P250 million.

“Detractors na sad? It’s simple mathematics. Paki-explain: how can a dump truck made in China that only costs around P2 million suddenly costs more than double its price in the bidding contracted by the Capitol? It’s the same unit but different prices,” said Garcia in a statement.

It was earlier reported that Capitol’s bidding for the P250 million purchase of heavy equipment was not only rigged to favor a bidder, it was also marred by overpricing.

A price difference of around P22 million was reported for the dump trucks alone.

Garcia said Davide should come up with a valid explanation.

“Don’t hide behind (by) accusing detractors. Come up with a valid explanation or else people will suspect that someone is going to make a lot of money out of this grossly overpriced transaction,” she said.

Davide earlier said there was no irregularity in the bidding for the purchase of P250 million worth of light and heavy equipment for the Capitol. He also said he does not believe that the equipment offered by the winning bidder may have been overpriced.

Instead, he believed that the allegations, including insinuations that the Capitol favored a bidder, were just invented by his detractors.

Davide said the Capitol’s Bids and Awards Committee still enjoys his confidence.

Davide already signed the Notice of Award for the equipment purchase to ConEquip Philippines Inc. as the bidder with the “lowest calculated and responsive bids.”

ConEquip bested RDAK Transport Equipment Inc. which offered P235 million and Civic Merchandising, Inc. (P237 million).

BAC post-disqualified RDAK and Civic as they allegedly did not meet the specification requirements.

Among the equipment offered by ConEquip was a model ZZ3167M3811 4x2 dump truck from China which had a bid price of P5 million per unit. 

A price quotation document for the same truck model, however, revealed that another company, which appeared to be related to ConEquip, offered the same truck for P2.6 million. This means that ConEquip would supply the Capitol dump truck units that each costs P2.52 million more.

The Capitol bid out in September the purchase of at least 27 units of various brand new construction light and heavy equipment with a budget allocation of P252.68 million.

The equipment to be procured are two brand new boom truck; one water tanker; nine dump trucks; one crawler tractor; two 10-wheeler self-loader trucks; three hydraulic excavators; two payloaders; two motor graders; two vibratory rollers; one forklift; and one new man lift.

The BAC documents are still pending before the Provincial Board Ad-Hoc Committee headed by Board Member Grecilda Sanchez-Zaballero for review before Davide is given the authority to enter into and sign the contract. —(FREEMAN)