Roshan Ram­char­i­tar

The Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, 2015 was as­sent­ed to and be­came law on Jan­u­ary 14, 2015.The Act seeks to re­form the pro­cure­ment laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go in keep­ing with prin­ci­ples of good gov­er­nance, such as ac­count­abil­i­ty, in­tegri­ty, trans­paren­cy, and val­ue for mon­ey. It es­tab­lish­es the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion to act as the gov­ern­ing body for mat­ters re­lat­ing to pub­lic pro­cure­ment and the re­ten­tion and dis­pos­al of pub­lic prop­er­ty.

"Pro­cure­ment" or "pub­lic pro­cure­ment" as de­fined in the Act re­lates to the ac­qui­si­tion of goods, works or ser­vices in­volv­ing the use of pub­lic mon­ey. "Pub­lic prop­er­ty" means re­al or per­son­al prop­er­ty owned by a pub­lic body.

Ob­jects

The ob­jects of the Act, as stat­ed in sec­tion 5, are to pro­mote in pub­lic pro­cure­ment and the dis­pos­al of pub­lic prop­er­ty: (a) the prin­ci­ples of ac­count­abil­i­ty, in­tegri­ty, trans­paren­cy and val­ue for mon­ey; (b) ef­fi­cien­cy, fair­ness, eq­ui­ty and pub­lic con­fi­dence; and (c) lo­cal in­dus­try de­vel­op­ment, sus­tain­able pro­cure­ment and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.

The Act ap­plies to pub­lic bod­ies and al­so pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship agree­ments in which arrange­ments are made be­tween a pub­lic body and a pri­vate par­ty to per­form a pub­lic func­tion or pro­vide a ser­vice on be­half of the pub­lic body.

A "pub­lic body" un­der the Act in­cludes the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent; the Par­lia­ment; the Ju­di­cia­ry; a Min­istry; the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly; a Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion; a Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty; a statu­to­ry body or state-con­trolled en­ter­prise; a Ser­vice Com­mis­sion; and a body cor­po­rate or un­in­cor­po­rat­ed en­ti­ty in re­la­tion to any func­tion which it ex­er­cis­es on be­half of the State.

Reg­u­la­tion

The Act brings all bod­ies spend­ing pub­lic mon­ey un­der a sin­gle reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work that cov­ers all stages of the pro­cure­ment process. The re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for over­sight and con­trol rests with the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion, which is head­ed by the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor and man­aged by a Board ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent.

The func­tions of the Of­fice as out­lined in sec­tion 13 of the Act in­clude:

a. is­su­ing and re­view­ing guide­lines, prepar­ing mod­el hand­books, in­cor­po­rat­ing stan­dard­ised bid­ding doc­u­ments, pro­ce­dur­al forms and rel­e­vant doc­u­ments for use in pub­lic pro­cure­ment (in­clud­ing guide­lines for spe­cialised cat­e­gories of trans­ac­tions such as for con­struc­tion and con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices);

b. the es­tab­lish­ment of a com­pre­hen­sive data­base of in­for­ma­tion on pub­lic pro­cure­ment and ten­ders re­ceived, the award and val­ue of con­tracts and oth­er in­for­ma­tion of pub­lic in­ter­est; and

c. set­ting train­ing stan­dards, com­pe­tence lev­els and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion re­quire­ments to pro­mote best prac­tices in pro­cure­ment.

Com­pli­ance and en­force­ment

Any pro­cure­ment of goods, works or ser­vices or re­ten­tion or dis­pos­al of pub­lic prop­er­ty that is not done in ac­cor­dance with the Act shall be void and il­le­gal.In car­ry­ing out its mon­i­tor­ing func­tion, the Of­fice may con­duct au­dits and pe­ri­od­ic in­spec­tion of pub­lic bod­ies and is­sue di­rec­tions to them. Any pub­lic body/per­son who fails to com­ply with such a di­rec­tion with­out rea­son­able jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to a fine of $100,000.00.

The Of­fice has the pow­er to in­ves­ti­gate any al­leged breach­es of the Act. If it is of the view that an of­fence has been com­mit­ted it shall make a re­port to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.

Un­der sec­tion 24 of the Act, the Reg­u­la­tor must al­so sub­mit an an­nu­al re­port to the Par­lia­ment, in­clud­ing among oth­er things, the to­tal num­ber and val­ue of con­tracts award­ed by pub­lic bod­ies, the num­ber of un­ful­filled pro­cure­ment con­tracts, and those bod­ies that have failed to com­ply with the Act.