MaxDefense received shoulder taps from people who matter, that the Corvette Acquisition Project for the Horizon 2 phase appears to be pointing towards reducing the number of proponents by eliminating more expensive offers.
Currently, the project's budget is placed at Php28 billion (US$528.3 million) for 2 Corvettes, but this includes the ammunition. Thus, the total cost of the ships with weapons is definitely less than the allocated budget.
Apparently the project's budget allocation for the ship is being pushed down to a certain amount, in return for more ammunition to be acquired. Based on the information we got, the new budget for the ship only is just some tens of millions of US dollars more compared to the contract price awarded for the Horizon 1 Frigate Acquisition Program (which are now called BRP Antonio Luna and BRP Jose Rizal).
The said changes would force several of the interested proponents to either not participate anymore as they cannot meet the budget, or will be forced to downgrade their offer with a smaller, lighter model with a cheaper model selection of subsystems including weapons and sensors, which may not be compliant to the draft specs anymore. Non-compliance may mean forced disqualification.
This narrows down the competition to a very few shipbuilders that are willing to drive their costs down, but could also mean possible cost cutting measures in production and in subsystems like offering less proven but cheaper systems.
(MaxDefense)