MANILA — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Thursday clarified that F2 Logistics was not yet awarded the logistics contract to deploy election equipment, peripherals, forms, supplies, paraphernalia and warehousing for the 2022 elections.

In a statement, Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez said the Parañaque City-based F2 Logistics Philippines Inc. was only declared as the "bidder with the lowest calculated bid" for the P1.61 billion project.

"F2 Logistics hasn't been awarded the logistics contract. Since it submitted the lowest bid, it is now going through the post-qualification process, which hasn't been completed yet," Jimenez said.

The Comelec's special bids and awards committee (SBAC) last week announced F2 had bested 3 other firms that qualified to bid for the project.

The other eligible bidders were LBC Express, Airspeed International, and 2GO Express, Inc.

Under the project specifications, the winning bidder must be responsible for the delivery and reverse logistics of all automated election system-related equipment, peripherals, forms and supplies for election day.

These equipment and supplies include vote-counting machines, external batteries and accessories; consolidation or canvassing system machines; transmission equipment and devices; ballots; and generator sets, among others.

Prior activities such as a roadshow, field tests, mock elections, training, and final testing and sealing of vote-counting machines are also included in the project.