Contractor: No decision yet on mobile lotto deal

MANILA, Philippines — The Mandaluyong City Regional Trial Court (RTC) hearing a petition for the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) to implement a contract for a Filipino-Chinese joint venture to provide information and communications technology systems for mobile betting for lotto games has not yet decided the case.

Smartinfo Philippines Inc. said a STAR report that it “failed in its bid to compel the PCSO to implement a contract for it to provide information and communications technology systems allowing mobile betting for the PCSO’s lotto games” because the RTC judge hearing the petition was about to go on leave was not true.

“For the record, no decision has been made on the matter and there is another hearing set for July 7,” Smartinfo’s legal counsel Marc Anthony Antonio said in a letter to The STAR.

The company also clarified that the PCSO’s legal department did not warn the board of directors against implementing the integrated sales agency agreement or ISAA due to legal and technical issues.

“The implementation of the ISAA … should have been long implemented (but) the general manager of the PCSO continues to refuse, fail or neglect to execute the requisite notice to proceed for the immediate operational set-up of the ISAA necessary to carry out the nationwide online mobile terminal project,” Antonio said.

“The sad reality at this point is the fact that the PCSO badly needs the structural and operational reforms to turn around its fiscal condition that seems to be irreversibly dwindling from bad to worse by the day. The agency’s revenue-earning capability has consistently shrunk to a dismal P6 billion during the pandemic from P64 billion before the pandemic,” he added.