Ken Ali

The Gov­ern­ment moved swift­ly yes­ter­day to de­liv­er on an elec­tion promise with re­spect to pub­lic pro­cure­ment. In do­ing so, the Gov­ern­ment dust­ed off and pre­sent­ed a draft bill on the sub­ject that was orig­i­nal­ly laid by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion four years ago. In an ex­plana­to­ry note, the mea­sure was tout­ed as aim­ing "to strength­en the qual­i­ty of gov­er­nance by pro­mot­ing the prin­ci­ples of good gov­er­nance." Those prin­ci­ples in­clude "val­ue for mon­ey, ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy by sys­tem­at­ic re-en­gi­neer­ing in the pub­lic fi­nan­cial man­age­ment sys­tem."

The draft leg­is­la­tion is ti­tled The Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Bill 2006. It was laid by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an. The mea­sure "will en­able the op­er­a­tion of cur­rent best prac­tice," the note added. There would be "em­pha­sis on per­for­mance, pro­pri­ety of min­istries and de­part­ments, statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ties and state-con­trolled en­ter­pris­es." It was fur­ther re­vealed that the bill is part of a pack­age of pro­posed leg­is­la­tion "to en­able a holis­tic and ra­tio­nal ap­proach to the re-en­gi­neer­ing of the pub­lic fi­nan­cial man­age­ment sys­tem." The oth­er bills were iden­ti­fied as the Na­tion­al Au­dit Of­fice of Trinidad and To­ba­go Bill 2006 and the Fi­nan­cial Man­age­ment and Ac­count­abil­i­ty Bill.

What the pro­posed law states

A Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor is be­ing pro­posed in the bill. The reg­u­la­tor will have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of en­sur­ing "an ef­fi­cient, ef­fec­tive and rel­e­vant pro­cure­ment sys­tem" that con­forms to the op­er­at­ing prin­ci­ples, ob­jec­tives and guide­lines.�The reg­u­la­tor will have a check­list of du­ties per­tain­ing to pur­chas­es and dis­pos­al of pub­lic prop­er­ty with tax­pay­ers' mon­ey. The of­fice-hold­er will al­so have ex­ten­sive pow­ers, in­clud­ing those that are grant­ed to a com­mis­sion of en­quiry. A Na­tion­al Pro­cure­ment Ad­vi­so­ry Coun­cil is al­so be­ing pro­posed in the Bill.

The coun­cil is to be made up of rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Gov­ern­ment, con­struc­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing and re­tail sec­tors and fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, with an ex-of­fi­cio rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the Fi­nance Min­istry. Sec­tion Five of the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion says any par­ty to a trans­ac­tion must ob­serve the prin­ci­ples of val­ue for mon­ey, ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy. Such a per­son should al­so ad­dress ef­fi­cien­cy, econ­o­my and ef­fec­tive­ness, ethics and fair deal­ing and pro­mo­tion of na­tion­al in­dus­try in a man­ner that con­forms with the coun­try's in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions.

White Pa­per since 2005

A pro­cure­ment pol­i­cy has been in the pub­lic are­na since 2005.

A White Pa­per on the sub­ject was laid in Par­lia­ment on Sep­tem­ber 26 of that year. But the doc­u­ment was nev­er turned in­to leg­is­la­tion in spite of re­peat­ed calls from the po­lit­i­cal op­po­si­tion, the con­struc­tion sec­tor, Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute and oth­ers. The then-gov­ern­ment promised in the 2005-06 and 2006-07 na­tion­al bud­gets to in­tro­duce the pro­cure­ment mea­sures.

In a pub­lic ad­dress in June 2007, then Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning said the pro­cure­ment regime could not be im­ple­ment­ed in its cur­rent form. To do so, Man­ning stat­ed, would slow the rate of the Gov­ern­ment's de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives. He was round­ly crit­i­cised by some, who in­sist­ed that a pro­cure­ment regime would have pre­vent­ed some of the con­tro­ver­sial pub­lic in­vest­ment is­sues.