Requesting Entity: Department of Education (DepEd)

Issues Concern: PCAB License for Joint Venture; Offer of Discount

Details

Whether it is sufficient for joint venture partners to submit their respective individual Philippine Contractors Accreditation Board (PCAB) license and registration in lieu of a joint PCAB license.

Section 23.5.2.3 of the IRR provides that persons/entities enumerated in Section 23.5.2.1 of the IRR may participate in public bidding if it has been issued a license by the PCAB to engage or act as a contractor, which necessarily includes a joint venture bidder. Thus, for joint venture bidders to be engaged as a contractor, a Joint License issued by PCAB pursuant to Section 38 of RA 4566, and not the PCAB license and registration individually issued to each joint venture partner, must be submitted.

In this regard, x x x the failure of the joint venture bidder to submit a Joint License may be a ground for its disqualification despite the submission of the individual licenses of each joint venture partner.

Whether the discount to the bid price offered by a bidder using its Bid Form may be considered valid despite its non-indication in other documents of the bid.

The Bid Form prescribed in the PBDs is part and parcel of the bidder’s bid documents, and provides a list of declarations and undertakings with respect to its bid and the procurement activity.

Discounts stated in the Bid Form allow bidders to itemize the application of discounts that are not yet reflected in the amounts specified in its bill of quantities and detailed estimates, vis-a-vis the program of works, as there could be a situation that the decision to offer a discount came long after these amounts have been prepared, finalized and reflected in the bid documents, and changing the entries may be too cumbersome and time consuming for the bidder.

Hence, it is our view that indicating an offer of discount in the Bid Form can be validly considered even though the financial documents included in the bid do not contain or indicate any reference to such discount.

Whether the afore-mentioned discount, if valid, should be considered in the computation and ranking of bid prices during the detailed evaluation.

Although x x x that Section 32.2.4 of the IRR does not mention the word “discount”, it does not mean that discounts are not to be considered in the computation of the bidder’s total calculated bid price. As a matter of fact, discounts and its corresponding percentage and computation are recognized to support a lower bid price proposal that is beneficial and advantageous to government, provided that the legal and technical components of the bid are fully compliant with the requirements of the project.