The government plans to draft a bill to regulate its procurement policies and procedures, Mak Soi Kun, who heads the legislature’s Follow-Up Committee for Public Finance Affairs, said Wednesday.
Speaking to reporters after the committee met government representatives in the legislature, Mak said both sides agreed that the existing regulations regarding procurement are out-of-date as they have been in use since the city’s erstwhile Portuguese administration.
Government procurement is currently regulated by a pre- 1999 handover decree-law.
Mak, a building contractor, said the committee agreed with the government’s intention to draft a bill on procurement policies and procedures and submit it to the legislature for debate and vote.
“The government does not have a timetable on when the bill will be drafted. But we strongly recommend replacing the decree-law with a law… since the mainland passed a law on procurement in 2013,” said Mak.
Pre-handover decree-laws were enacted by the city’s then Portuguese governors without any involvement of the legislature.
Mak said the members of his committee believed that a new procurement law would enable the public to check how much and on what the government is spending its money. He also said that some members of the committee raised the issue of the assessment of bidders in major construction projects, saying that more details would be discussed in the next meeting.(macaunews/macaupost)
