Commission Against Corruption, Macao SAR

When investigating a complaint over the awarding of a cleaning service contract by the Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC), the CCAC found that some of the administrative body members of two of the bidding companies were the same and therefore collusion or bid rigging possibly existed. However, both the bid opening committee and the bid evaluation committee did not realise the situation.

Although the bidder that was finally awarded the contract was not the said two companies, the CCAC considered that as the procuring entity, the IC was responsible for promoting and ensuring fair competition in the procurement procedure and preventing collusion or bid rigging between bidders. It is worth mentioning that the Public Procurement Law will enter into force on 1^st September this year. Article 6 of the law establishes the principle of fair competition, while Paragraph 6 of Article 40 also stipulates that “members of a candidate or bidding group shall not be independent candidates or bidders in the same procedure, nor can they be part of more than one candidate or bidding group, otherwise the groups, independent candidates or bidders involved will not be admitted or will be excluded from the public procurement procedure.” Therefore, the CCAC believed that the IC must establish an effective supervisory mechanism to prevent bidders from committing the said misconduct.

The IC agreed on the CCAC’s opinions and subsequently updated its internal working guidelines, expressly requiring that when checking the tender document, the bid opening committee should, through the written report of commercial registration submitted by the bidder, review the composition of its administrative body so as to determine whether there are any situations of collusion.