Bidder confident of winning P2.5-B Comelec deal

MANILA, Philippines - A service provider that was declared eligible to participate in a bidding to supply voting machines expressed confidence yesterday that it will capture the P2.5-billion contract with the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

Indra Sistemas S.A. spokesman Javier Moreno said the company is confident that its technology is a “better one, to be honest.”

He said that is “why we are confident. Let’s see what happens, but we see that we can be very strong in the second stage.”        

The Comelec’s bids and awards committee previously approved Indra’s eligibility based on its eligibility requirements and initial technical proposal.

The other bidder, Smartmatic-TIM, was declared eligible but only after hurdling questions on its tax clearance certificate and articles of incorporation.

Moreno said Indra’s technology, Paper Vote ++, is capable of advancing the automated election system (AES) in the Philippines.

“We are preparing for this very carefully and we are quite confident that our technology can provide here some good improvements that the country really needs,” he said.

Although passing the first stage is a good starting point, they will still be exerting extra effort to prepare for the second stage of the bidding process, Moreno said.

Only Indra and Smartmatic submitted their bid proposals for the lease of 23,000 units of additional optical mark reader machines, which will be used to supplement the old precinct count optical scan machines of Smartmatic-TIM in the 2016 polls.