The Ministry of Finance ("MOF") has recently issued the Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Third-party Performance Assessment of the Government Procurement of Services (the "Opinions").
The Opinions map out eight tasks, including "making clear duties of relevant subjects", "defining the scope of performance assessment" and "reinforcing information disclosure, supervision and administration". Further, the Opinions clearly specify that, in terms of programs concerning the government procurement of public services, from which the general public will benefit, active efforts shall be made to introduce third-party agencies to conduct the performance assessment to look into whether the procurement of services is economical, standardized, efficient and fair. According to the Opinions, it is allowed to select the budgeting method depending on the characteristics of each program. For a general program, the assessment expenses may be covered by the expense budget for services to be bought; while for a major program, or multiple programs jointly assessed, a separate budget may be prepared for the assessment expenses. Furthermore, the Opinions state that the MOF will pilot such third-party performance assessment in ten provinces and cities, including Tianjin Municipality, Shanghai Municipality, Jiangsu Province, Zhejiang Province and Shenzhen City, from 2018 to 2019.