Govt. To Publish Contract Details
(From Our Own Reporter)
WELLINGTON. April 28. The National Party's election promise that the names of tenderers and their bids for large Government contracts will be published will be implemented, but considerable thought is being given to how this should be done, according to the Minister of Works (Mr Goosman).
“Rest assured that we are going to do something.” Mr Goosman said. “The matter has been before the Cabinet, and has been referred to a Cabinet committee for a report “The committee entrusted with this task is the Administration of Government Committee. under the chairmanshin of Mr Shand.”
The policy of publishing only the name of the successful tenderer, plus an approximation of the price (at the Minister’s discretion), dates from a meeting of the departments concerned which was called by the previous National Government on May 14. 1951.
Until then the names and prices of all tenderers were published, but a direction was issued by the Cabinet to follow the present procedure.
It is understood the departments have the same objections to full publication now as they had then. The objections are. briefly:— f l) That the departments’ own experts must satisfy themselves on certain details concerning each tenderer. 12) That other points taken into consideration may have a bearing on the capacity, soundness and integrity of the tendering company. (3) That comments on these points cannot very well be published.
<4> That the publication of the tender prices alone would be incomplete and unfair. One recent instance was mentioned by a department official in which the estimate made by the department's own officers of the cost of the job was about £450.000. Most of the tenders received were around or above this figure, but one was about £320.000.
It was not surprising that the department’s officers had some doubts about this one" said the official.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19610429.2.107
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Press, Volume C, Issue 29500, 29 April 1961, Page 10
Word count
Tapeke kupu
312Govt. To Publish Contract Details Press, Volume C, Issue 29500, 29 April 1961, Page 10
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Press. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.
Acknowledgements
Ngā mihi
This newspaper was digitised in partnership with Christchurch City Libraries.