Indian-led consortium qualifies to bid for LTFRB’s IT project

MANILA, Philippines - The consortium of IL&FS Technologies Ltd. (ITL) of India and SAHI Technologies Unlimited Inc. has qualified for the P298 million information technology (IT) public-private partnership (PPP) project of the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB). 

“After a full and detailed evaluation of the qualification documents submitted to the Pre-qualification, Bids and Awards Committee (PBAC) in relation to the above-mentioned Project, the PBAC has rated the Consortium of IL&FS Technologies Ltd. and SAHI Technologies Unlimited Inc. as qualified,” Winston Ginez, vice chairman of the PBAC and chairman of the LTFRB, said in Department of Transportation and Communications General Bid Bulletin 09-2015. 

ITL, which offers consulting, software development, systems integration, as well as IT infrastructure management services, is part of the IL&FS Group, one of India’s largest infrastructure and financial conglomerates. 

SAHI, meanwhile, has been involved in infrastructure and IT projects in the country and overseas.

The consortium was the only party that submitted qualification documents for the project within the deadline set earlier this month.

According to the project’s invitation to pre-qualify and bid, the auction will follow the two-stage process. This means firms are pre-qualified based on minimum legal, technical and financial requirements first before submitting their technical and financial proposals.

The Road Transport IT Infrastructure Project Phase II involves the upgrade of LTFRB’s existing IT system. 

The private partner will be responsible for the computerization of the agency’s manual processes, as well as development, supply, and operationalization of the network infrastructure (hardware), database, and applications (software). 

The project is aimed to clean up the existing data of the LTFRB, as well as enhance data collection and processing. 

It is, likewise, seen to facilitate integration of the LTFRB and related agencies.

Through the project, it is expected the processing time for transactions with the LTFRB will be reduced, access to public information will be improved and channels for feedback will be made available. 

The private partner and the government will have a cooperation period of 11.5 years for the project, with 1.5 years intended for the installation, application development and set-up of the IT system. 

Aside from the LTFRB’s IT project, the government is also offering another IT PPP deal, the P1.59 billion Civil Registry System (Phase II) of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).

PPP Center executive director Cosette Canilao said four firms have submitted pre-qualification documents for the PSA’s project on Dec 18. These are Unisys Philippines, Filmetrics Corp., Pointwest Consortium, and HTL Consortium.

The PSA’s project involves the computerization of the civil registry operations of the agency.

It also covers the construction of a building to house the servers of the agency’s IT system.