Davao sports dome project overpriced by P57 M?

DAVAO CITY — The sports dome, which the city government is currently constructing, is allegedly overpriced by at least P57 million, the Commission on Audit (COA) regional office here claimed in a report.

A special COA team, in a report last November, said the Artica Sports Dome project was allegedly overpriced by as much as P57,427,783.01 which represented the excess cost or "positive variance."

The audit team attributed the "positive variance" to overestimated quantities of certain contract items and construction materials, improper computation of equipment expense, and double application of indirect cost in the cost estimators.

City administrator Nestor Ledesma, however, said there was nothing anomalous in the P300-million project.

"No one can say that the project is overpriced. We did not also hide or suppress the COA report which even said that the project still had to be re-evaluated since the review was not complete yet," he said.

Ledesma said it is too early yet to declare that the project is overpriced since the COA review is still not final.

The overpricing issue surfaced only recently after the project contractor requested the release of P14.4 million in "retention fee" which the city engineer’s office, in turn, questioned.

It turned out that despite the COA report on the alleged overpricing, the city government regularly released partial payments to the contractor, the Archipelago Builders, from November last year to May this year.

The continued releases of the partial payments raised suspicions that the COA report must have been kept from concerned city government officials because payments were still made in spite of the findings.

Ledesma, however, said the retention fee was not released not because of the COA findings but due to the non-issuance of a completion certificate which the city government and the contractor still have to accomplish.