Wazzup Pilipinas!
Amidst the perception that the agency is not moving forward with the supply of license plates, the Land Transportation Office (LTO) Chief, Assistant Secretary Edgar Galvante, is on top of the situation and is proceeding with the procurement of license plates with dispatch and in accordance with existing procurement laws.
The matter was raised during the House of Representatives Committee on Transportation meeting on 06 December 2017 which he was unable to attend due to his hospital confinement since Tuesday, 05 December 2017.
It will be recalled that the 2013 procurement of Motor Vehicle (MV) /Motorcycle (MC) plates was questioned before the courts and the Commission on Audit, and these cases remain pending to this day. Said procurement should have covered the supply of license plates from 2014-2018.
Moreover, in June 2016, the SC issued a temporary restraining order preventing the LTO and the Department of Transportation and Communication from releasing and distributing 700,000 license plates turned over by the Bureau of Customs after the plates' supplier-importer failed to pay the required customs duties.
Thus, when the present administration came in July 2016, there was no budget allocation for procurement of license plates for 2016, 2017 and 2018. Unconvinced that the procurement of license plates is dependent on the resolution of the cases involving the previous procurement, ASec Galvante then requested for additional funds to be included in the LTO’s 2017 budget in the amount of P400 million in order to proceed with the procurement of license plates.
Sometime in November 2016, DOTr Secretary Arthur P. Tugade approved the request and set aside the amount of P1 billion from DOTr’s budget for LTO’s procurement of license plates.
The LTO clarified that the agency has already issued the notice of award (NOA) to the winning bidder in the procurement of license plate in the amount of P978.8 million on 01 December 2017.
The winning bidder, Trojan Computer Forms Manufacturing Corporation and J.H. Tonnjes E.A.S.T. GmbH & Co. KG Joint Venture, has already been required to provide the performance security. Initial delivery is expected sometime in March 2018.
The LTO assures the public that the agency is doing the best it can, in compliance with existing laws and regulations, to deliver the license plates.
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