RA 9184 · Government Procurement Reform Act
Every peso a Bicol LGU spends on goods, works or services goes through the same seven stages, and six of them produce a public document. If you know which document comes when, you know what to ask for and when it should already exist.
The sequence
This is the ordinary competitive bidding route. Alternative methods exist for small or urgent purchases and they have their own thresholds, but they do not remove the posting requirement.
Before anything is bought, the LGU publishes what it intends to buy that year. An item that appears in a contract but never appeared in the plan is worth asking about.
The public notice. Posted on PhilGEPS, on the LGU’s own website and at the LGU premises. The posting period is set by law, and a short one narrows the field of who can respond.
Held for larger contracts. Prospective bidders ask questions and the answers bind the whole procurement.
Bids are opened publicly by the Bids and Awards Committee. Observers are entitled to attend, including from civil society.
The lowest calculated bid is checked for whether the bidder can actually do the work. This is where a bid gets disqualified after already winning on price.
The formal decision. Published. This is the document that tells you who won and for how much.
The contract is signed and the clock starts. The completion date on a DPWH record traces back to this.
Who actually posts
Four of the nine governments we scored link procurement documents from their front page. Camarines Norte and Sorsogon City are the strongest, each with an Invitation to Bid or BAC bulletin, a Notice of Award and an Annual Procurement Plan.