Smartmatic bags 3 more contracts for May polls

POLL technology provider Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM) Corporation (TIM) cornered on Thursday three other contracts worth nearly P700 million, months after the government also bought their counting machines to be used in the May 13 midterm elections.

Based on three Notices of Awards issued by the Commission on Elections (Comelec), Smartmatic-TIM has won the right to provide the compact flash (CF) cards, transmission modems, and electronic transmission of poll results, which has a total price of P686.28 million.

Smartmatic won the right for the CF cards with their P45.2-million bid for the 82,200 CF card units (P550 per unit).

It also managed to win the public bidding held at the Comelec for 15,000 units of transmission modems for a price of P154,576,800 (P10,305 per unit).

The electronic transmission of election results, meanwhile, costs P486,507,840.

Under the contract, Smartmatic is directed by the Comelec to post their performance security, including their cash bond, letter of credit, and surety bond amounting to about 35 percent for each of the contract price.

Smartmatic–TIM is also the company that sold the precinct count optical machines to the Comelec at the amount of P1.8 billion.

The Supreme Court upheld last June the legality of the purchase of the machines that were first used in the 2010 presidential elections.

Smartmatic-TIM had already expressed its desire to participate in the public bidding for all the other election-related supplies. (HDT/Sunnex)