THE new management of the embattled Procurement Service-Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM) suspended its procurement of non-common use supplies and equipment “until further notice,” more than a week after the issue of its procurement of supposedly “pricey” and “outdated” laptops for public school teachers arose.
In a statement on Tuesday, PS-DBM Executive Director Dennis Santiago said the suspension will allow them to focus on their main mandate—to procure common-use supplies and equipment, including ballpens, papers, staplers, paper clips, folders, among others.
PS-DBM, an attached agency of the DBM, handles the centralized procurement of CSE for the whole government.
“I issued a directive suspending the procurement of non-common use supplies and equipment, effective immediately,” Santiago said.
“During the suspension, the PS-DBM shall not accept new requests for Non-CSE procurement until further notice. This will allow us to focus on the fulfillment of our primary mandate, which is to procure CSEs,” Santiago added.
Common-use supplies refer to those materials and equipment that are necessary for the transaction of official business of the procuring entity and are used in its day-to-day operations.
On the other hand, non-common-use supplies pertain to those required by an agency for a specific project only. Santiago said they will just complete the ongoing procurement of non-CSE.
“We will just finish the procurement of the non-CSE items that are ongoing or in the pipeline. But we’ll go until that point only. After that, we’re done. All procurements will just be limited to CSE,” Santiago said.
To recall, the Commission on Audit questioned the allegedly hefty price of the laptops for public school teachers, were procured by the Department of Education (DepEd) through the PS-DBM at P58,000 each.
The PS-DBM, headed by Santiago, recently turned over to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) documents related to the procurement of DepEd’s laptops, as well as other contracts entered into by PS-DBM in previous years which were the subject of Commission on Audit (COA) findings.
Santiago added that the move to request the NBI to step in was made after the examination showed alleged discrepancies in the initial findings, similar to COA’s observations.
The issue once again rekindled calls from lawmakers to abolish PS-DBM, which was also previously the subject of controversy for its procurement of alleged overpriced Covid-19 medical supplies, a task outsourced to it by the Department of Health.