Secretary for Financial Services & the Treasury Christopher Hui today convened the first meeting of the Task Force on Review of Government Procurement Regime to follow up on the incident regarding the Government's procurement of bottled drinking water. 

Mr Hui, who chairs the task force said: "In order to enhance the tendering and procurement procedures at the earliest time, in the interim, we have plans to put forward ready-to-implement proposals on major areas such as due diligence, tender requirements, contract management and quality assurance to enhance gatekeeping at different aspects and remedy deficiencies."

Apart from establishing the direction and scope of the review on the existing government procurement regime and procedures, certain areas of oversight or deficiencies at the organisational, systemic and implementation levels were also identified.

The task force also discussed various improvement proposals and set a timetable for the upcoming work with a view to putting forward a review report on the preliminary recommendations which will be available after three months.

Members of the Task Force include Permanent Secretary for Financial Services & the Treasury (Treasury) Andrew Lai, Director of Government Logistics Carlson Chan and representatives from the Civil Service Bureau, the Commerce & Economic Development Bureau, the Development Bureau and the Department of Justice.