Written Answer by Ministry of National Development on findings by NUS Business School researchers

Feb 3, 2020

Assoc Prof Daniel Goh Pei Siong: To ask the Minister for National Development whether the Ministry and SLA will look into findings by NUS Business School researchers that property developers could be exchanging information about Government land sales which had led to imputed losses amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars due to lower winning tender bids.

Answer:

The Government adopts an open, transparent and competitive tender process in the sale of sites under the Government Land Sales (GLS) programme. The tender process is transparent to all potential tenderers, with land sale requirements specified clearly in tender documents.

With regard to the NUS study, the researchers themselves have withdrawn any claims of insider trading amongst developers, and said that they could not find any evidence that such activity had indeed taken place. In any case, MND has looked at the 103 GLS tenders awarded during the period referenced by the NUS study. For all of these tenders, multiple bids were received, ranging from 3 to as high as 23 bids for each site. More than 80 per cent of the tenders had 5 bids or more. All tenders were awarded to the tenderers with the highest acceptable bids, and these were broadly in line with or higher than independent estimates of the market value of the sites.

In the event there is reason to suspect any collusion or freak result, the Government will take the necessary actions, including closing the tender without award, or take enforcement action should there be any infringement of the law.