PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The gov­ern­ment must re­main com­mit­ted to the mod­erni­sa­tion and im­prove­ment of the pro­cure­ment process.

This was the view shared by Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of The UWI Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness Mar­i­ano Browne at the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion and CAF - De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean's ‘Best Prac­tices in Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Re­form – Pan­el & Round­table Dis­cus­sions’ at the Hy­att on Thurs­day.

The for­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance was a pan­el­list dur­ing the morn­ing ses­sion of the event, when asked what should be the gov­ern­ment's main pri­or­i­ties in terms of re­form.

He stressed that the pro­cure­ment process would face scruti­ny and pres­sure due to the high de­mand for gov­ern­ment con­tracts.

"The re­al is­sue on the ta­ble is ac­cess to gov­ern­ment con­tracts, par­tic­u­lar­ly about con­struc­tion, and the pre­sump­tion that be­cause prices rose, it was be­cause of not mere­ly in­ef­fi­cien­cy, but un­just means and un­just en­rich­ment when re­al­ly prices were in­creas­ing all over the world. That trans­lat­ed in­to price in­creas­es in the do­mes­tic mar­ket," said Browne.

"You can't change what's hap­pen­ing in tak­ing place in the world econ­o­my. From that per­spec­tive, no amount of rou­tin­i­sa­tion is go­ing to solve the mar­ket prob­lems which are caused by changes in eco­nom­ic fac­tors."

Browne not­ed there will al­ways be sig­nif­i­cant com­pe­ti­tion for gov­ern­ment con­tracts, so the pro­cure­ment process must be sol­id. He ex­plained that many of­ten mis­took im­prov­ing the process as a fix or a method to­wards re­duc­ing the price of se­cur­ing goods and ser­vices.

How­ev­er, he stat­ed that these costs were in­vari­ably con­nect­ed to mar­ket con­di­tions.

"The whole idea is that in pro­cure­ment is that there is need to le­galise and set out pro­ce­dures so that you will gain ef­fi­cien­cies, but the mar­ket de­ter­mines what prices are go­ing to be. You can't change that," said Browne.

He con­tin­ued, "So the crit­i­cal is­sue mov­ing for­ward is go­ing to be gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment to the process and to mod­erni­sa­tion be­cause it's re­al­ly about mod­ern­iz­ing gov­ern­ment sys­tems. The pri­vate sec­tor re­al­ly has no is­sue here. The re­al is­sue is go­ing to be com­pe­ti­tion for gov­ern­ment con­tracts, and that's a crit­i­cal point in terms of how we're go­ing to do it. "

He said the process must be made ro­bust and prop­er­ly stream­lined so that the best re­sults can be found through the process.

"The is­sue now isn't about changes in the law. It is, per­haps. in strength­en­ing the spec­i­fi­ca­tion method­ol­o­gy in terms of our pro­cure­ment sys­tems, so that gov­ern­ment is much more clear in terms of what it is buy­ing,"

An­drei Ben­nett, Chief Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Pol­i­cy Of­fi­cer for Ja­maica, fol­lowed up Browne's con­tri­bu­tion by stress­ing that T&T should place greater in­vest­ment in da­ta col­lec­tion and analy­sis as a means to en­hance the pro­cure­ment process.