Requesting Entity: Road Board

Issues Concern: Constitution of the Special Bids and Awards Committee (SBAC)

Details

(1) Whether a personnel from the Accounting Unit may be designated as a regular member of the BAC.

Section 11.2.2 provides the qualifications of BAC members for NGAs such as Road Board Secretariat (RBS). Based on this provision, the membership is classified into two types – regular and provisional.

[T]he regular BAC members, composed of the Chairman and two other officers, must be at least third ranking and fifth ranking permanent officials, respectively, of the procuring entity. The provisional members must either be a technical expert with experience relevant to the particular procurement or the end-user representative knowledgeable in procurement laws. It should be noted that provisional members are designated to sit in the BAC for a particular procurement activity while regular members sit in all the procurement activities of the agency.

Under RA 9184, the disqualified personnel include the HOPE or approving authority and the official who approves procurement transactions. On the other hand, COA Circular 2003-004 prohibits the Chief Accountant and personnel of accounting units to be regular members of the BAC as it is necessary to ensure that the procurement and payment functions are segregated, in keeping with the rules and principles of good internal control and to avert the possibility of conflict of interest as prohibited under the rules. Under the said Circular, the subject personnel may only serve as provisional member if the Accounting Unit is the end-user of the item.

(2) Whether the DPWH-NCR Regional Director, which is not a part of the plantilla of the RBS, may be designated as a member of the BAC.

[A]ll members of the BAC, whether regular or provisional, must occupy a plantilla position in the procuring entity. It may be well to add that the end-user unit contemplated in the rule is not the actual beneficiary of the project, but the unit within the procuring entity which requested the procurement of the project, or from whose Project Procurement Management Plan the procurement is included.

[I]t is our view that such officer cannot be designated as BAC member since the procurement rules limit the BAC composition to officials of the procuring entity.