An official tendering system designed to curb anti-competitive conduct is powerless to combat engineering firms colluding to manipulate Hong Kong’s lucrative building maintenance market, a public inquiry into the city’s deadliest fire in decades has heard.

Testifying on the 21st day of an independent committee’s hearing, three Urban Renewal Authority (URA) officials said on Thursday that the statutory body had neither the capacity nor the resources to combat bid-rigging linked to estates’...