(Chinhphu.vn) - Mr. Tran The Hoa (Hai Phong) is the officer in charge of bidding work of the unit. Currently, his unit's bidding packages do not hire bidding consultants, but the unit is both the investor and the bidding party.

During the project implementation or procurement budget, the unit hired consulting company A to prepare request documents and evaluate proposal documents for construction and installation packages or goods procurement packages of the unit. Accordingly, company A expects 3 individuals with capacity and experience under the management of company A to participate in the expert team to prepare request documents and evaluate proposal documents.

According to Mr. Hoa, referring to Clause 4, Article 78 of the Law on Bidding, which stipulates the responsibilities of the investor: "4. Decide to establish a bidding party with personnel meeting the requirements to perform the contractor selection work; in case the personnel do not meet the requirements, select a consulting contractor to act as the bidding party or perform some tasks of the bidding party. Decide to establish an expert team meeting the provisions of Article 19 of this Law in case a consulting unit is not hired as the bidding party".

Mr. Hoa asked, is the authority to decide to establish a team of experts for 3 individuals under the management of company A made by the Director of his unit or the Director of company A?

Regarding this issue, the Ministry of Planning and Investment (now the Ministry of Finance) has the following comments:

Law No. 57/2024/QH15 amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law on Planning, the Law on Investment, the Law on Investment under the public-private partnership model and the Law on Bidding (Clause 6, Article 4, effective from January 15, 2025) has amended and supplemented the provisions of Article 19 of the Law on Bidding 2023 in the direction that in cases where investors and bidding parties hire consultants to prepare documents for expression of interest, pre-qualification documents, bidding documents, request documents; evaluate documents for expression of interest, pre-qualification documents, bidding documents, proposal documents, and registration documents for implementation of business investment projects, the expert team will be established by the consulting unit.