Parliamentary Replies

Date: 11 November 2013

Parliamentary Question by Mr Zaqy Mohamad:

To ask the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance whether the Ministry will make Government procurement more transparent by specifying the price-quality ratios used for tender evaluations and making them available to all suppliers in GeBiz.

Reply by DPM and Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam:

Government procurement rules require agencies to evaluate tender proposals against the set of criteria specified in the Invitation to Tender. For construction-related tenders, it is already a requirement for Government agencies to specify the price-quality ratio and the weighting of the main criteria that are used for tender evaluation. Under the Quality Fee Method for construction consultancy services, the weighting given to the quality of the proposal would range between 60-80%, and this would be clearly specified in the Invitation to Tender and made known to all suppliers. 

However, it is not always applicable to specify price-quality ratios. For example, in a relatively straight forward and simple procurement where cost is the primary consideration, using weighted criteria is not needed since the procurement decision can be made based on price. 
  
The Ministry of Finance is currently in the process of revising our procurement rules to be aligned with our obligations under the World Trade Organisation’s revised Agreement on Government Procurement (WTO-GPA). Under the revised WTO-GPA, signatories are required to provide greater clarity on their tender evaluation criteria. This means that Government agencies will be required to not just spell out the criteria used for evaluating the tender, but also highlight the relative importance of each evaluation criterion. For instance, if a particular quality criterion carries more weight than price or another quality criterion, this should be specified upfront so that tenderers will know which criterion is more important when the Government agency is evaluating the tender.