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Following is a question by the Hon Lau Ping-cheung and a written reply by the Chief Secretary for Administration, Mr Donald Tsang, in the Legislative Council today (April 30):

Question:

In the prequalification exercise completed at the end of last year, the Special Selection Board for the Tamar Development Project selected five applicants for participation in the tendering. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council whether, in order to maintain the impartiality of the Board in its assessment of tenders, guidelines have been issued to Board members and the public officers concerned to specify that, outside the meetings for tender assessment, no comments should be given in private to any prequalified applicants or architect partners on their submitted designs or design concepts, nor should there be any unofficial contacts with these applicants or architects and, where contacts with the prequalified applicants are unavoidable, the details and the course of such contacts should be made public; if such guidelines have been issued, of the details; if not, the reasons for that, and whether any guidelines will be compiled prior to the commencement of the tendering?

Reply:

Madam President,

As a signatory to the World Trade Organization Agreement on Government Procurement, the Government is firmly committed to full compliance with the requirements of the Agreement in pursuing the Tamar development project. To ensure the fairness and integrity of the procurement or tender exercise pertaining to the Tamar project, members of the Special Selection Board (SSB), being the party directly involved in the tender evaluation and selection processes, are required -

(a) to treat and hold in strict confidence all information relating to the applications for prequalification, assessment and selection of prequalified applicants, tenders of the design-and-build contract, assessment of such tenders and the subsequent award of the tender for the contract;

(b) not to disclose or permit to be disclosed any information referred to in (a), except when such disclosure is agreed by the Government, or take advantage of any information whether or not for personal gain;

(c) to declare to the Board any actual or perceived conflict of interests immediately when the party concerned becomes aware of any such conflict; and

(d) to take steps to avoid any actual or perceived conflict of interests with any prospective candidates/ tenderers or candidates/ tenderers by putting the party concerned in a position of obligation towards any of them.

Members of the SSB have signed an undertaking that sets out the above requirements in full. These requirements follow the guidelines issued under the Stores and Procurement Regulations (SPRs) that govern conflict of interests by public officers, including those who provide technical support for the work of the SSB.

Furthermore, as a prescribed condition in the prequalification document published in August 2002, the following groups of persons would not be eligible to participate in the prequalification or tender exercise of the Tamar project to avoid potential conflict of interests -

(a) members of the SSB or the team of public officers that provides technical support to the Board and their immediate family members;

(b) an employee or person having an employment contract or is at continuous and close professional association or partnership with a person in (a) above; and

(c) a company of which a person in (a) above is a director or a major shareholder.

With the comprehensive and effective mechanism in place to control conflict of interests, we do not consider it necessary or practical to prohibit contacts between the SSB members or public officers concerned and the prequalified applicants or their associate consultants. After all, the sheer size or scale of the Tamar project implies that the prequalified applicants are each supported by a large group of individuals and companies from the field of architecture, structural engineering, building services engineering, etc. It would not be fair or proper to forbid or require full disclosure of liaison between the parties, bearing in mind that such contacts may have nothing to do with the Tamar project.

On the Tamar project itself, there may be circumstances where communication and contacts are necessary to facilitate the gathering of information or conduct of tender assessment. In this case, it would not be appropriate to make public details of the communication as it would involve confidential information pertaining to the tender exercise. That being the case, as the ultimate but effective safeguard, any discussion or exchange of information that may involve a conflict of interests, whether actual or perceived, would be caught by the undertakings that members of the SSB have entered into or the SPRs that govern all public officers.

End/Wednesday, April 30, 2003

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