Requesting Entity: Supreme Court of the Philippines (SC)

Issues Concern: Multi-Agency Joint Procurement

Details

Whether the Constitutional Fiscal Autonomy Group (CFAG), composed of the Supreme Court, the Commission on Elections, the Civil Service Commission, the Commission on Audit, the Office of the Ombudsman, and the Commission on Human Rights, could jointly procure bullet-resistant vehicles for key officials of the CFAG.

Based on Section 11.2 of the Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) of Republic Act No. (RA) 9184, which requires that the members be permanent officials of the procuring entity, an officer from one procuring entity cannot be designated as a Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) member in another procuring entity since the procurement rules limit the BAC composition to officials of the procuring entity. Hence, the concept of a multi-agency joint procurement that will be conducted using a the creation of a Special BAC composed of officials from various procuring entities will run counter to the provisions of RA 9184 and its IRR.

In addition, the Guidelines on the use of Negotiated Procurement (Procurement Agent) under Section 53.6 of the IRR of RA 9184 may be able to address the objective of attaining the advantages from bulk procurement. The CFAG member-offices may select the same procurement agent that will undertake the procurement activity in accordance with the terms and conditions CFAG agreed to adopt and also agree with the procurement agent to assign its officials as part of the Technical Working Group. Each CFAG member-office has the authority to approve the award of contract that will be recommended by the BAC of the procurement agent, thereby maintaining the power to make the final decision on the process.