Govt To Publish All Amounts Offered In Land Bids

The government will start disclosing amounts offered by developers who compete in land tenders, in a bid to raise the transparency of the system.

The new policy will come into effect from April.

Currently, only the value of the winning bid is declared as well as the name of all bidders -- with no information about how much they bid.

The Development Secretary Michael Wong said under the new system, the government will also start releasing the values of all bids received four weeks after the announcement of the winning tender -- without identifying the firms behind the bids.

Wong said when a winning bid is far more than the market expectations, people will wonder if the bid was an overall representation of the bids received. The new step will help to clear such doubts.

According to the budget, the land sale programme for the next fiscal year comprises 27 residential plots.