3 October 2025
John Armstrong
Via email:
fyirequest32255[email address]
Tēnā koe John
Request for information: COVID19 vaccine contracts
Thank you for your request dated 7 September 2025 under the Official Information Act 1982
(the Act) for information relating to COVID19 vaccine contracts. You requested:
Q1/ Can you please supply al documentation, memos, emails, approval
questionnaire and meeting minutes for Medsafe approval?
Q2/ Pharmac has stated "meets NZ and international standards of safety and
effectiveness".
Can you please cite the applicable standards for NZ and applicable international
standards and supply documentation for and / or links to these standards?
Q3/ What is / has been the cost to the taxpayer for this purchase?
Q4/ Can you please supply al documentation, memos, emails and meeting minutes
for the procurement process which should include: conflict of interest assessment,
product risk assessment and competitive procurement principles (open and Effective
Competition or Fair Competition?
Q5/ Please supply the unredacted Pfizer contract.
Your request to date
On 12 September 2025, parts 1 and 2 of your request were transferred to the Ministry of
Health under section 14 of the Act.
On 15 September 2025, we contacted you as part 4 of your request was for a very large
volume of information. On 17 September, you refined that part of your request to:
Q4/ Can you please supply documentation for the procurement process which should
include: conflict of interest assessment, product risk assessment and competitive
procurement principles (open and Effective Competition or Fair Competition)?
Response to your request
Please find a response to each part of your request below:
Q3/ What is / has been the cost to the taxpayer for this purchase?
The cost of the work to complete this transaction has been met from within baseline
operational funding.
202526061
I can advise the combined gross expenditure for COVID19 vaccines and treatments in the
2024/25 Financial Year was $99.6 mil ion.
There is no specific budget for COVID19 vaccines. From 1 July 2023, COVID19 vaccines
were added to Pharmac’s overal medicines budget. You can find more information about the
CPB at:
https://www.pharmac.govt.nz/medicinefundingandsupply/thefundingprocess/settingand
managingthecombinedpharmaceuticalbudgetcpb
I am unable to provide net price information. Providing the COVID19 vaccine expenditure on
its own could reveal confidential unit pricing.
This is withheld under section 9(2)(b)(i ) of the Act, where its release would likely
unreasonably prejudice the commercial position of the person who supplied the information
Q4/ Can you please supply documentation for the procurement process which should
include: conflict of interest assessment, product risk assessment and competitive
procurement principles (open and Effective Competition or Fair Competition)?
Please find attached as Appendix 1 the procurement plan for this transaction. This contains a
comprehensive overview of the procurement process carried out. Some information has
been withheld under the fol owing sections of the Act:
Section 9(2)(b)(i ) where its release would likely unreasonably prejudice the
commercial position of the person who supplied the information,
section 9(2)(j) to enable a Minister or any public service agency to carry on
negotiations without prejudice or disadvantage (including commercial and industrial
negotiations),
section 9(2)(h) to maintain legal professional privilege,
section 9(2)(g)(i) to maintain the effective conduct of public affairs through the free
and frank expression of opinions by or between or to Ministers and officers and
employees of any public service agency.
Where information has been withheld under section 9 of the Act, I have considered the public
interest in the release of this information and decided that it does not outweigh the need to
withhold at this time.
Q5/ Please supply the unredacted Pfizer contract.
This part of your request has been refused for the fol owing reasons:
Public interest considerations – ss 9(2)(c) and 9(2)(ba)(ii) of the Act
We consider that releasing contracts with vaccine suppliers would impede New Zealand’s
ability to obtain future vaccines and medicines. This is because doing so would be likely to
erode New Zealand’s reputational standing with suppliers, and lead to trust and confidence
issues in New Zealand’s relationship with pharmaceutical companies. We are satisfied that
this continues to apply to New Zealand’s efforts to procure medicines (including COVID19
vaccines) from suppliers (who wil be less wil ing to reach agreements with New Zealand if
there is a risk to the confidentiality of those agreements), with a corresponding impact on the
health or safety of the public.
Unreasonable prejudice to the position of the supplier – Section 9(2)(b)(ii)
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The release of the ful contracts, even with redactions, would be likely to unreasonably
prejudice the commercial positions of vaccine suppliers; the negotiation process, and the
final agreements arrived at, were the product of a unique set negotiations between Pharmac
and the supplier, and the release of any portion of a company’s contract for the supply of
COVID19 vaccines would be of interest to its competitors. Further, and as already noted
above, releasing contracts with vaccine suppliers may undermine trust and confidence in the
New Zealand government and so have a negative effect on the New Zealand government’s
measures to efficiently and costeffectively procure medicines from pharmaceutical
companies to protect the health and safety of the public.
Pharmac’s standard terms and conditions
As you wil see from Appendix 1, part of the rationale for this process was to bring our
contractual arrangements into line with Pharmac’s standard contractual terms and
conditions. You can find more information about the RFP process at:
www.pharmac.govt.nz/newsandresources/consultationsanddecisions/requestfor
proposalssupplyofcovid19vaccine?type=RFP&page=1&status=closed
More specifical y, you may be interested in Schedule 5, which show the terms and conditions
for supply proposed by COVID19 during the RFP process:
www.pharmac.govt.nz/assets/Schedule5_proposedtermsandconditionsforsupplyof
COVID19vaccines.pdf
We consider this template to be a summary of the new contract under section 16(1)(e) of the
Act. If Pharmac were to release further information about the contents of the contract beyond
what is in the standard terms and conditions, it would reveal which clauses and sections
were subject to negotiation between Pharmac and the supplier.
We trust that this information answers your queries. Please note, you have the right to make
a complaint to the Ombudsman about our response to your OIA, under section 28(3) of the
OIA. Details of
how to make a complaint are on the Ombudsman’s website.
To make information more freely available, we publish selected OIA responses (excluding
personal details) on our website. Please get in touch with us if you have any questions about
this.
Nāku noa, nā
Oliver Whitehead
Team Leader, Government Services
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