Committee calls for improved procedures on public tendering

The Legislative Assembly (AL) Follow-up Committee for Land and Public Concessions Affairs has reviewed public tendering processes, particularly for public works, and has issued six recommendations to the government to improve procedures, the president of the committee, lawmaker Chui Sai Peng said yesterday in a press briefing after the committee meeting.

According to Chui, the committee focused on project bidding procedures of a total of ten governmental departments concentrating on eight different aspects. These included the composition of the bid opening committee and the bid evaluation committee, the selection of procedures, the formulation of bid evaluation criteria, the list of contractors and the creation of this database; the selection criteria of the entities, the supervision mechanism, the follow-up work after the contract awarding, and the fairness and transparency of information in the process.

After this detailed analysis, the AL committee concluded that the government has been generally following the relevant legislation on the procedures but noted that some departments’ procedures lack consistency with others.

Tenders from 10 government departments were analyzed, including the Municipal Affairs Bureau, the Public Administration and Civil Service Bureau, the Financial Services Bureau, the Labour Affairs Bureau, the Public Security Forces Affairs Bureau, the Correctional Services Bureau, the Health Bureau, the Cultural Affairs Bureau, the Public Works Bureau, and the Environmental Protection Bureau.

The committee issued a report that submits a total of six recommendations to the government, aiming to improve the process and add consistency and uniformity to all the public tendering procedures.

Firstly, it hopes that the government can examine in more detail the differences in the public project bidding operations of the different departments, and evaluate whether there are any disadvantages to the existing results, in order to optimize them.

Secondly, the committee hopes that there will be a unification of the criteria and standards, noting that departments can independently call for an introduction of new criteria or standards when found necessary, but that this should be brought to the attention of all the departments to be refined and made uniform.

The third recommendation is related to the review of the legal standards and making appropriate assessments of the legal provisions particularly if there are cases in which problems in the implementation of the legal provisions have been found.

The committee also proposes that all departments should proactively put forward all work requirements to improve the bid opening procedure.

A further recommendation relates to the contractors’ database and the lack of software that can be used as a regular procedure for the lucky draw to avoid any human interference in the process as well as making it faster, consistent, and uniform.

The committee also wants the government to address the risks related to the direct awarding process, with the committee expressing hope that the government can provide a more detailed justification on why such cases were necessary in lieu of a formal public tender.

The sixth and final recommendation has to do with information transparency and uniformity, particularly concerning the bidding price, construction period, and list of accepted or refused bidders as well as the reasons for the exclusion.

The AL committee also wants to improve the notification procedure, noting that all bidders should be notified of the results of the tender they took part in.

All these recommendations will be part of a final report to be published at a later stage by the AL where more details on the flaws found can be consulted for further review and improvement.