Consultation submissions for proposal to modify PHARMAC’s approach to competitive procurement

16 November 2020

Dear [name and contact details redacted]

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

Thank you for your request dated 16 October 2020 under the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA) for information relating to the proposal to modify PHARMAC’s approach to competitive procurement.  You wrote:

Under the Official Information Act, I am requesting all submissions (which I understand are at least 25) to Pharmac’s ‘Proposal to modify PHARMAC’s approach to competitive procurement’ consultation which closed 24 July 2020.

PHARMAC received 15 submissions in response to the proposal to modify PHARMAC’s approach to competitive procurement(external link) consultation which opened 10 July 2020, closed 24 July 2020.

Please see Appendix 1, attached with this response, for copies of the submissions received.

Appendix 1 [PDF, 5.2 MB]

Please note that PHARMAC approaches its assessment of requests for information under the OIA on the basis that, once released, the information becomes publicly available - in other words once we release the information to you it becomes available to any other party in that exact form (whether by you distributing it to others or by virtue of us receiving the same request from a different third party).

We have redacted a small amount of information, under remit of the OIA, from the document provided as we consider this is necessary to:

• protect the privacy of natural persons (section 9(2)(a)); or
• protect information which is subject to an obligation of confidence, where the making available of the information would be likely to prejudice the supply of similar information, or information from the same source, and it is in the public interest that such information should continue to be supplied (section 9(2)(ba)(i)).

As required under the OIA, we also considered whether, in the circumstances, the withholding of this information was outweighed by other considerations which render it desirable, in the public interest, to make this information available. In this case we did not consider that the public interest outweighed the reasons for withholding the information.

Please note you have the right, by way of complaint under section 28(3) of the OIA to an Ombudsman, to seek an investigation and review of our decision.

We trust that this information answers your queries. We are making our information more freely available, so we will now publish selected OIA responses (excluding personal details) on our website. Please get in touch with us if you have any questions about this.

Yours sincerely
Rachel Read
Manager, Policy and Government Services