Israeli-Filipino telecom firm bags P400-M AFP contract

A joint venture of an Israeli and Filipino telecommunications company has won the P400-million communications project of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), a top company official announced yesterday.

In a letter to The STAR, Odilon Sta. Teresa, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Datatrail, said Ceragon/Datatrail joint ventures has been declared by the Department of National Defense (DND) Bids and Award Committee (BAC) as having the lowest calculated bid price at P388,898,757 as against P430,898,765.51 of the US-based Lucent Technologies for the fixed communication system (FCS) project of the AFP.

"Under instruction to bidders for the AFP-FCS and the pertinent laws governing the procurement process, there is no shortlist of firms to speak of," Sta. Teresa clarified.

The official was reacting to The STAR report over the weekend that said the Ceragon/Datatrail Join venture and Lucent Technologies are in the shortlist of firms vying for the multimillion-peso project.

Sta. Teresa explained that the post-qualification process had been completed, which included a review of the qualification documents and the AFP-FCS technical working group traveling to Israel to undertake post- qualification work.

"We have been informed that the lowest calculated bid of the joint venture of Ceragon Networks/Datatrail Corp. has been firmed up as the lowest calculated bid after a rigid post-qualification process as evidenced by signed resolutions of the DND-BAC under then Secretary Avelino Cruz and Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane," Sta. Teresa said.

The Datatrail executive also noted that their company is the Build-Operate-Transfer Proponent of the Alien Certificate of Registration Project of the Bureau of Immigration, which is expected to generate more than P1.5 billion in revenues for the government in the next 10 years.

Sta. Teresa said Datatrail has earned the respect of its competitors by winning a majority of the competitive tenders in the Philippines telecommunications industry in the past two years.

In a 16-month period, he said, the telecom firm won and installed telecommunications projects with Digitel and Smart/PLDT worth more than $15 million. – Perseus Echeminada