Although the May 10, 2010 polls is still seven months away, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) already paid a total of P1,078,722,719.91 to Total Smartmatic TIM Corp. (STM), a joint venture of Total Information Management (TIM) and Smartmatic International Corp., that won the bidding for the automation of next year‘s elections with its offer of P7,191,484,739.47 for the project which had an approved budget of P11,223,618,400, smaller by P79,071,600 than P11,301,790,000 appropriated by Congress for the purpose.

The payment was effected pursuant to Article 4 (4.1.1) of the 24-page contract signed by Comelec Chairman Jose A.R. Melo and STC Board Chairman Juan C. Villa, Jr. on July 10, 2009 with the conformity of STC Chief Financial Officer Armando R. Yanes and TIM Senior Vice President Salvador P. Aque which provides that STC is entitled to initial payment equivalent to 10 percent or P719,148,473.94 of its P7,191,484,739.47 winning bid for project initialization and the setting of project management team (PMT) and project systems including all license and firmware.

The contract also provides that upon delivery of development set of Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOs) machines consisting of 20 units, STC will be entitled to additional initial payment of 5 percent or P359,574,236.97 of its P7.2 billion winning bid.