NPO faces blacklisting by LTO, procurement board

MANILA, Philippines - The National Printing Office (NPO) is facing the possibility of getting shut out of Land Transportation Office (LTO) printing contracts and being blacklisted by the Government Procurement Policy Board (GPPB), the owner of a private printing firm said yesterday.

Guillermo Sylianteng, Jr., general manager of Ready Form, Inc., (RFI), said his company filed a petition before the LTO, asking the agency to suspend the NPO from LTO printing jobs for two years and initiate proceedings for the blacklisting of the government printing firm before the GPPB, the government body authorized to blacklist erring suppliers and contractors.

Sylianteng said that his petition, filed before the LTO last Nov. 25, was probably the reason why the NPO bids and awards committee issued a circular last Dec. 1 to suspend him from participating in NPO’s public biddings.

The RFI said in its petition that Republic Act 9184, otherwise known as the Government Procurement Reform Act, provides that procurement cannot be delegated – which is what happens when the NPO gets printing contracts of government agencies and subcontracts them to “accredited security printers.”

The RFI said when the LTO awarded a printing contract to the NPO earlier this year, the NPO violated RA 9184 by farming out the job to an accredited printer.

The RFI said in a Sept. 18 letter from NPO director Servando Hizon to LTO chief Arturo Lomibao, Hizon “admitted that it had subcontracted the printing job entrusted to it by the LTO to its private security printers.”

The RFI was issued a five-year suspension by the NPO’s bids and awards committee due to alleged falsification of its financial statements.

Sylianteng said the suspension was illegal and warned that the agency’s officials face criminal charges for issuing the blacklist.

He said many government agencies have stopped giving their printing contracts to the NPO starting this year to comply with RA 9184.

Sylianteng earlier filed plunder charges against several officials of the NPO, including former NPO director Enrique Agana, for allegedly sub-contracting printing jobs worth hundreds of millions of pesos in violation of RA 9184.

Previously, all government agencies go to the NPO to have their official forms printed. However, due to its lack of modern printing facilities, the NPO farms out these contracts by holding public biddings to select the private printers that will undertake the printing of government forms.

The NPO charges the government agency a 15 percent “service fee” for the job actually undertaken by a private printer.

Sylianteng said this sub-contracting causes undue delays and higher printing costs due to the NPO’s 15 percent service fee.

He pointed out that by holding public biddings to get a third party to undertake the printing of government forms, the NPO was practically functioning like a procurement office for the printing requirements of other government agencies.

“The NPO was not mandated to be a procurement service. It has no mandate to sub-contract printing jobs,” Sylianteng said.