ANGARA PROPOSES REVIEW OF PROCUREMENT ACT

Senator Edgardo J. Angara proposes a review and amendment of the Government Procurement Reform Act in order to localize the bidding for classroom construction, as well as to accelerate the procedure for their repair and rehabilitation.

During the budget hearing for Department of Education (DepEd) held recently at the Senate, Angara called for some revisions in the law's Implementing Rules and Regulations specific to the bidding and procurement process.

Angara, chair of the Senate Committee on Education, Arts and Culture, says that the public bidding mandated by this law must be localized. He noted that many projects in the country's private school sector are bidded out to foreign companies.

Further, Angara said most government agencies and public schools do not include provisions for rehabilitation and repair in the initial funding requests. It becomes inconvenient, he says, when they have to file another allocation request when they need to do repairs, then wait for the paperwork to go through.

"The intent of this law is primarily to fight corruption by preventing the collection of unnecessary funding from the government and facilitating the public bidding of government projects. "However, now that we have seen the real-world application, we learned that certain provisions of this policy's IRR might need some adjustment. We are glad that these issues were brought up because it gives us a chance to remedy the situation as soon as possible," he asserted.

Republic Act No. 9184, "An Act Providing for the Modernization, Standardization and Regulation of the Procurement Activities of the Government and for Other Purposes" was authored by Angara in the 12thCongress. This law, passed in 2002, is one of the primary pieces of legislation that are created to combat corruption.