Hong Kong opens up land bidding process but still lags on transparency

The government will provide data on all bids only after the winning transaction is sealed.

Bloomberg reports that Hong Kong is opening up its opaque government land tendering process after the government pledged to provide information on all land bids.

However, the disclosure would only occur after the winning bid transaction is completed which can take as much as several weeks. 

This is stark contrast to China where the public can follow bidding in government land auctions in real time and Singapore where all land bids are ranked and bidding companies are announced when results are announced. 

Providing the market with information on all the bids provides a better sense of the true market value of a piece of land and might also prevent the kind of aggressive bidding seen by HNA Group, which many believe overpaid to buy four plots of land in the former Kai Tak airport, said David Ng, head of China and Hong Kong property research at Macquarie Capital Ltd.

Here’s more from Bloomberg: