New Bayan Trade chairman named

Electronic market exchange BayanTrade celebrated its third anniversary recently and following its yearly tradition, appointed a new chairman in the person of ePLDT president Ray Espinosa.

At the same time, BayanTrade marked the occasion by signing a P400-million contract with the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT).

Espinosa takes over from JG Summit president Lance Gokongwei as the fourth BayanTrade chairman.

The chairmanship rotates annually among the six founding consortium members, namely, Ayala Corp., Benpres Holdings, PLDT, Unilab, Aboitiz Equity Ventures and JG Summit Holdings. Eugenio Lopez III, chairman and CEO of ABS-CBN, was the first chairman; Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, president and CEO of Ayala Corp., the second; and Gokongwei, the third.

Luis Miguel Aboitiz was named co-vice chairman, with Carol Carreon, who was appointed to that position last year.

In an open panel discussion, Carreon emphasized the role of BayanTrade in helping realize the e-commerce strategies of its corporate clients as well as the government’s key thrust toward business process outsourcing.

She also lauded the pioneering efforts of procurement and business officers from leading BayanTrade customers such as the Manila Water Co., Ayala Land Inc. (ALI) and PLDT, all of which shared their individual success stories in using the BayanTrade platform for e-bidding and e-procurement.

Caroline Henson, PLDT’s vice president for support service sector, said it is their positive experience in using BayanTrade services that encouraged them to use the exchange’s new service called electronic sourcing.

This is embodied in an agreement which the two parties signed during the BayanTrade anniversary, wherein PLDT commits to purchase at least P400 million worth of supplies using BayanTrade from June 2003 to June 2004.

Henson said at least 95 percent of PLDT’s business units have adopted e-procurement, which has minimized maverick buying resulting in huge savings.

"Our savings from e-procurement is P94.03 million due to lower transaction costs and process efficiencies," said Henson. "We also have P91.68 million in savings from doing e-bidding as a result of direct price reductions (as against the allotted capital expenditures)."

PLDT is the fourth company to subscribe to BayanTrade’s e-Sourcing Plus Program. ALI was the first and it expects to procure over P2.8 million worth of supplies via BayanTrade.

Aboitiz Equity Ventures is also using the service and has a procurement agreement for P250 million. Manila Water Co., on the other hand, targets the purchase of over P500 million worth of materials and services from the country’s leading private exchange.