Good Day po! The Procuring Entity has a tie-up agreement with a company where the latter has to provide the PE with equipment and the PE has to procure the consumable of the equipment from the said company. Can direct contracting be adopted for the purchase of these consumables?
No. This is a circumvention of the process.
To procure using direct contracting, there a market survey must be conducted first to determine th availability of the goods and their suitable substitutes. Once the single source is identified, procurement will be simplified sy submitting price quotations/pro-forma invoice and award may be recommended after some negotiations.
In your inquiry, the tie-up agreement is technically the contract (presumably without undergoing procurement) that binds the PE to procure consumables with them. Direct contracting cannot be used even if the PE insists that it can be sourced from their MOA partner.
This scheme is actually a marketing strategy of suppliers, making it appear that the equipment is free but in reality the cost of the equipment is embedded in the cost of consumables as the agency is already a captured market. No businessman will give freebies without something in return. And yes I agree, the consumables cannot be procured thru direct contracting using the tie-up agreement as basis, considering the absence of the conditions for the use of such modality.