The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Tuesday declared the joint venture of SMS Global Technologies and Sequent Tech as the lowest calculated bidder in the poll body's procurement of online voting technology for overseas voters in 2025.

According to Comelec Spokesperson John Rex Laudiangco, the venture submitted a bid of P112 million for the project which has a budget ceiling of P465.8 million.

Laudiangco said the joint venture will proceed with Comelec's post qualification evaluation for the online voting and counting system (OVCS) contract.

He added that SMS Global Technologies is a Pasig-based Filipino company whose projects include the Secure Online Services Cloud for the National ID under the Philippine Statistics Authority.

Meanwhile, the joint venture of Voatz, Inc., EPDLT, Inc., and Ebizolution, Inc., is the second lowest bidder, with a bid of P435.5 million.

On the other hand, Indra Soluciones Technologias de la Information, SLU was disqualified by the poll body due to its failure to comply with the proper accomplishments of its Financial Bid Templates.

"Despite being an Eligible Bidder po, hindi po sila nag-comply sa pag-accomplish ng Financial Bid Templates po by indicating N/A (Despite being an Eligible Bidder, they did not comply with the completion of the Financial Bid Templates by indicating N/A)," Laudiangco said.

"For items po kasi which has no cost, the rules indicate that these must be indicated with '0' or '-' to unequivocally declare that such is made available free or at no cost to the government," he added.

The companies will advance to the post-qualification stage, where their capacity to comply with the technical requirements will be assessed.

"Pangako po namin ang mahigpit, extensive, transparent, rigorous, comprehensive, at intensive na post qualification para masuri po ang totoong kakayanan ng ating bidders (We promise a strict, extensive transparent, rigorous, comprehensive, and intensive post qualification to check the true ability of our bidders)," Laudiangco said.