Cementing the fat checks

A district office of a major infrastructure agency in northern Luzon appears to be marching to its own tune despite a directive from the department’s top official to level the playing field in project bidding.

Sources inside the district engineering office told Nosy Tarsee that during a bidding conducted on 5 March, a single construction firm emerged as the lone bidder — and eventual winner — of a government project.

The reason: the contractor allegedly possessed a batching plant, a facility used to mix and produce concrete for construction works.

The requirement has been controversial because the department chief had earlier announced that owning a batching plant should no longer be a prerequisite in government bidding, a move intended to dispel suspicions that certain contractors were being favored.

Even before the bidding, several contractors reportedly wrote the district office in January asking to be allowed to participate even without such a facility, arguing that the requirement restricted competition.

But insiders said the old practice remained in place. When the bids were opened, only one contractor qualified and eventually secured the project.

Members of the district’s Bids and Awards Committee reportedly defended the decision, saying they had yet to receive a formal memorandum from headquarters removing the batching plant requirement.

Records posted on the agency’s Transparency Portal show the winning contractor has already secured more than P1 billion worth of projects in the same district between 2021 and 2025.

The contracts span the tenures of several district officials, some of whom, sources claim, maintain close ties with the firm.

For critics of the agency’s procurement process, the episode raises fresh questions about whether bidding rules are truly changing — or merely being churned like concrete.