After coming under fire for the exorbitant cost of their high-end laptop procurement a few days ago, the Department of Health (DOH) has revised its bid to acquire laptops and desktops.
This time around, the DOH has consolidated the bid, combining both their laptop and desktop acquisition into one, Php 1.78K million bid. The new bid specifies that the DOH is looking to acquire 17 desktops with a maximum bid of 1,030,846 and 11 laptops with a maximum bid of Php 755,040, for a grand total of Php 1,785,886. You can access the bid here.
That means the DOH is willing to spend no more than Php 60,638 per desktop and Php 68,640 per laptop.
The requirements on the bidding document show that the DOH is looking to acquire laptops that have a high-end, Intel Core i7-1165G7 processor, Intel Xe graphics as well as sporting a 15.6-inch 4K display (or 14-inch full HD panel), up to 2 TB of PCIe NVMe M.2 storage, among other requirements. The desktop specifications list a requirement of an Intel Core i7 processor (no specific generation listed), as well as at least 8GB of 2666MHz memory, 25GB solid-state drive along with a 1TB HDD, a graphics card that has at least 4GB of memory and a 23.8-inch full HD display.
The DOH was earlier called out because of their planned acquisition of 4 high-end laptops that had a maximum bid amount of Php 700,00, which meant that the agency was willing to spend around Php 175K on a single unit.
As far as pricing goes, it looks like whoever authorized the new bid checked the fair market value for laptops, as 68K is just right for a fairly high-end laptop that’s capable of what the DOH needs them for.
Take note that potential bidders don’t have to hit the bidding limit that the DOH placed, and government agencies are usually instructed to purchase the lowest bid that fulfills their requirements. The fact that the DOH revised its bid for its acquisition of laptops and desktop computers is a good sign, although we wish they would have done the market research at the beginning to avoid the ire of taxpayers nationwide.
