DOTC picks winner of LTO IT project

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) announced yesterday that it has selected a winning bidder for the P8.2-billion Land Transportation Office (LTO) road transportation information technology infrastructure project.

With an Approved Budget for the Contract (ABC) of P8.2 billion, the bidding was won by Digitext Asia Corp., which put up a bid of P3.8 billion, the lowest bid among five companies.

Digitext is a three-firm consortium with New Tech Media Solutions and Trima Infrastructure and Services Limited.

Five groups submitted bids with the DOTC bids and awards committee last Monday by the 2 p.m. deadline for the submission of bids for the project, from nine companies that purchased bid documents sold by the DOTC BAC last April.

Besides Digitext, the other bidders were Fritz and Macziol Asia, Eurolink Network, International Corp., Kaisa Consulting and Ceragon Network.

Fritz and Macziol Asia submitted the second lowest bid at P5.3 billion, while Eurolink was third lowest with at P5.8 billion. The financial bids of Kaisa and Ceragon were not opened because they lacked technical requirements. 

Kaisa was considered as non-complying because it did not have a schedule of requirements, while Ceragon lacked a schedule of requirements and a certificate of reciprocity for a foreign consortium to qualify for the bid.

 The four other companies that purchased bidding documents but did not participate in the bidding were Stradcom Corp., which is the current system provider of the LTO IT system; Smartmatic; Oberthur Technologies and Indra Sistemas S.A. The contract with Stradcom will expire in February next year.

The DOTC will go through the bid evaluation and post qualification process, including resolving the remaining issues with the non-complying bidders and other technical and administrative matters.

DOTC Secretary Joseph Abaya, in a statement, said the new IT system will provide a viable and long-term solution to address the current system’s issues.

“The previous LTO IT system, which has been running for 13 years, is no longer responsive to current land transportation regulation requirements. Once the new LTO IT system is in place, it will make it easier for authorities to recover stolen vehicles, trace smuggled vehicles, prevent double registration and monitor unregistered vehicles,” the DOTC said.