Mar­garet Rose

Pro­cure­ment spe­cial­ist

As Par­lia­ment pre­pares to de­bate the 2026 Bud­get, a ques­tion deep­er than whether a line-item is jus­ti­fied aris­es. Do our bud­get mech­a­nisms ac­tu­al­ly fos­ter the con­di­tions to cre­ate re­al ac­count­abil­i­ty and val­ue for pub­lic spend­ing? Or is our an­nu­al bud­get­ing ex­er­cise mere­ly a com­pli­ance game? The ev­i­dence sug­gests that we may have built a sys­tem that pe­nal­izes its own ob­jec­tives.

Every Sep­tem­ber, across Trinidad’s cen­tral gov­ern­ment and state en­ter­prise sec­tor, a pre­dictable rit­u­al un­folds: the year-end spend­ing rush. This is not nec­es­sar­i­ly cor­rup­tion nor is it in­com­pe­tence. In my view, the be­hav­iour is a ra­tio­nal re­sponse to ir­ra­tional in­cen­tives. While our pro­cure­ment laws as­pire to max­imise Val­ue for Pub­lic Mon­ey (Vf­PM), ef­fi­cien­cy and strate­gic sourc­ing, they col­lide with bud­get mech­a­nisms that pun­ish the very sav­ings they achieve. The re­sult? A sys­tem that re­wards those who spend every dol­lar, re­gard­less of val­ue, and pe­nal­izes those who save through shrewd ne­go­ti­a­tion or in­no­v­a­tive pro­cure­ment.

Com­plex sys­tem de­sign is a dis­tinct dis­ci­pline, one that moves be­yond tra­di­tion­al siloed think­ing to ex­am­ine how parts in­ter­act, what be­hav­iours they re­ward, and whether their com­bined ef­fects ad­vance or sub­vert the sys­tem’s te­los i.e., its in­tend­ed out­comes. As mod­ern nat­ur­al sci­ence now ac­cepts the in­ter­con­nect­ed, in­ter­de­pen­dent and of­ten in­de­ter­mi­nate na­ture of re­al­i­ty, think­ing must shift from a lin­ear, me­chan­i­cal world­view to an un­der­stand­ing of the world as a dy­nam­ic web of re­la­tion­ships and feed­back loops. This ap­proach has al­ready proven in­valu­able in en­gi­neer­ing, tech­nol­o­gy and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, where in­ter­ac­tions be­tween com­po­nents of­ten mat­ter more than the com­po­nents them­selves.

Ap­plied to law and gov­er­nance, this lens re­veals rules and in­sti­tu­tions built piece­meal and with­out recog­nis­ing that the un­der­ly­ing task of any le­gal re­form is com­plex sys­tems de­sign. Our laws are craft­ed by par­lia­men­tar­i­ans who are meant to pro­vide over­sight and in­te­gra­tion, but the tech­ni­cal ad­vice that in­forms these laws comes from do­main ex­perts - eco­nom­ic spe­cial­ists proph­esy­ing fis­cal pol­i­cy im­pacts, fi­nan­cial man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als ad­vis­ing on bud­get con­trols, CIPS-trained pro­cure­ment ex­perts shap­ing sourc­ing reg­u­la­tions, au­dit spe­cial­ists in­form­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty frame­works, and le­gal ex­perts ad­vis­ing on con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty and statu­to­ry in­ter­pre­ta­tion. Each ex­pert work­ing with­in their spe­cialised do­main, rarely con­sid­er­ing the sys­tem-wide im­pli­ca­tions of their well-in­ten­tioned mech­a­nisms.

What is there­fore ab­sent from the room is com­plex sys­tem de­sign ex­per­tise, which in­tro­duces new tools to gen­er­ate un­der­stand­ings of the whole and how the parts in­ter­act. With­out this sys­tems per­spec­tive, what emerges is not a co­her­ent gov­er­nance sys­tem but a col­lec­tion of mech­a­nisms that, de­spite shar­ing iden­ti­cal ob­jec­tives of fis­cal pru­dence and Val­ue for Pub­lic Mon­ey (Vf­PM), can ac­tive­ly un­der­mine each oth­er through their in­ter­ac­tion. This is not a fail­ure of any in­di­vid­ual law or reg­u­la­tion, but rather a fail­ure of sys­tem de­sign - the meta-dis­ci­pline that con­sid­ers how com­po­nents work to­geth­er to shape be­hav­iour and pro­duce le­git­i­mate, ef­fec­tive out­comes.

The bud­get dis­in­cen­tive

As we con­sid­er the 2026 Bud­get, two key­stone regimes, the Ex­che­quer and Au­dit Act (EAA) and the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act (PPDP­PA) pur­sue pub­lic val­ue mon­i­tor­ing and pro­tec­tion through dif­fer­ent in­stru­ments, yet their in­ter­ac­tion can un­in­ten­tion­al­ly re­ward haste and pe­nal­ize pru­dence.

Ex­che­quer & Au­dit Act (EAA)

Sec­tion 42 of the EAA is the ful­crum of an­nu­al­i­ty. Every ap­pro­pri­a­tion laps­es at the close of the fi­nan­cial year and “the un­ex­pend­ed bal­ance of any mon­eys with­drawn from the Ex­che­quer Ac­count shall be sur­ren­dered,” with no resid­ual au­thor­i­ty to car­ry for­ward un­less a law­ful ex­cep­tion ap­plies. Trea­sury con­trol is not in­ci­den­tal but con­sti­tu­tive. Sec­tions 3–5 vest su­per­vi­sion and con­trol of pub­lic fi­nances in the Min­is­ter/Trea­sury, in­clud­ing dis­cre­tion to lim­it or sus­pend ex­pen­di­ture if the fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion so re­quires. Sec­tion 24 re­quires ap­pro­pri­a­tion ac­counts that com­pare each vote with its ap­pro­pri­a­tion and ex­plain vari­ances, while Sec­tion 25 man­dates the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s an­nu­al re­port to Par­lia­ment, in­sti­tu­tion­al­is­ing scruti­ny of un­der- and over-spends across the sys­tem. Com­bined, these pro­vi­sions cre­ate the in­for­ma­tion flows and dis­cre­tionary pow­ers that trans­late un­der­spends in­to tighter al­lo­ca­tions.

The fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tions op­er­a­tionalise the year-end bound­ary in be­hav­iour-shap­ing ways. Reg­u­la­tion 69 for­bids clas­sic year-end workarounds, no park­ing of funds in de­posits, no ear­ly draws of stores mere­ly “to utilise pro­vi­sion,” no de­fer­ring prop­er charges to evade an ex­cess. Reg­u­la­tion 67 places pru­dence on the ac­count­ing of­fi­cer, re­quir­ing con­tin­u­ous at­ten­tion to vote suf­fi­cien­cy, which in prac­tice height­ens sen­si­tiv­i­ty to vis­i­ble un­der­spends as the year clos­es.

Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment & Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act (PPDP­PA)

Sec­tion 5 of the PPDP­PA sets out manda­to­ry pro­cure­ment ob­jec­tives: ac­count­abil­i­ty, in­tegri­ty, trans­paren­cy, val­ue for mon­ey, and the pro­mo­tion of com­pe­ti­tion, fair­ness, eq­ui­ty, pub­lic con­fi­dence, lo­cal in­dus­try de­vel­op­ment, sus­tain­able pro­cure­ment and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, a cat­a­logue that right­ly pri­or­i­tizes re­sults over rit­u­al. The Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) en­forces this ori­en­ta­tion through an­nu­al pro­cure­ment plans and per­for­mance re­ports that make ef­fi­cien­cies vis­i­ble across the fis­cal year.

The col­li­sion is pre­dictable: pro­cure­ment law re­wards achiev­ing bet­ter out­comes in­clud­ing cost ef­fi­cien­cies, while the an­nu­al­i­ty dis­ci­pline can pun­ish the same re­sult when low­er out­turns, in prac­tice, feed down­ward re­vi­sions in next year’s Es­ti­mates.

How in­cen­tives mis­fire in prac­tice

Con­sid­er a hy­po­thet­i­cal but all-too-plau­si­ble sce­nario: an ac­count­ing of­fi­cer fac­ing Sec­tion 42’s lapse-and-sur­ren­der rule and Reg­u­la­tion 69’s an­ti-park­ing stric­tures in Sep­tem­ber. Her pro­cure­ment team has se­cured mean­ing­ful sav­ings through strate­gic sourc­ing. Let’s say 15 per cent off an­tic­i­pat­ed costs through bulk pur­chas­ing and frame­work agree­ments. The re­ward? A weak­er case for next year’s pro­vi­sion when the ap­pro­pri­a­tion ac­counts sur­face the vari­ance, even though that vari­ance re­flects com­pe­tent pro­cure­ment rather than over­bud­get­ing. The al­ter­na­tive is to spend out ful­ly. This sends the mes­sage that the base­line is tight, re­gard­less of whether that spend­ing de­liv­ered Val­ue for Pub­lic Mon­ey (Vf­PM), a con­cept which, prop­er­ly un­der­stood, ex­tends be­yond com­mer­cial con­sid­er­a­tions to in­clude eq­ui­ty, ecol­o­gy, and sys­tem ef­fects.

This is not an in­dict­ment of the an­nu­al bud­getary process per se; it is a di­ag­no­sis of emer­gent be­hav­iour when rules craft­ed in si­los in­ter­act with­out sys­tems de­sign to align their in­cen­tives.

What bet­ter-de­signed sys­tems do

Ju­ris­dic­tions that have con­front­ed the Sep­tem­ber burn prob­lem have in­tro­duced bound­ed car­ry-for­ward de­vices that pro­tect fis­cal con­trol while avoid­ing per­verse in­cen­tives.

The Unit­ed King­dom’s Bud­get Ex­change mech­a­nism al­lows de­part­ments to car­ry for­ward fore­cast De­part­men­tal Ex­pen­di­ture Lim­its (DEL) un­der­spends with­in lim­its and timeta­bles, while pre­vent­ing si­mul­ta­ne­ous Re­serve bids, there­by pre­serv­ing dis­ci­pline while im­prov­ing plan­ning. Cana­da per­mits de­part­ments to car­ry for­ward up to 5 per cent of op­er­at­ing bud­gets and 20 per cent of cap­i­tal votes. Aus­tralia goes fur­ther, al­low­ing an­nu­al ap­pro­pri­a­tions to re­main avail­able for three years be­fore laps­ing. While we cling to colo­nial-era fi­nan­cial con­trols, these na­tions have evolved sys­tems that re­ward rather than pun­ish ex­cel­lence.

As a na­tion that gained in­de­pen­dence in 1962, I prof­fer these in­ter­na­tion­al ex­am­ples, not to sug­gest copy­ing for­eign tem­plates (nev­er my thing!), but rather to il­lus­trate the de­sign prin­ci­ple: cal­i­brat­ed flex­i­bil­i­ty can re­ward gen­uine ef­fi­cien­cy with­out open­ing the flood­gates.

Next week, Part 2 will move from di­ag­no­sis to pre­scrip­tion, re­veal­ing how Sec­tion 43 of our own EEA al­ready pro­vides the le­gal foun­da­tion for pol­i­cy in­no­va­tion. I will ex­plore a prac­ti­cal pi­lot that could trans­form Sep­tem­ber’s spend­ing fren­zy in­to year-round val­ue cre­ation with­out new leg­is­la­tion, just smarter sys­tems de­sign. I will al­so share why To­ba­go, with its leg­isla­tive frame­work, has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­come a cen­tre for pro­cure­ment ex­cel­lence, not on­ly in this Re­pub­lic but across the re­gion.

This two ar­ti­cles form part of the Nav­i­gat­ing the New Pro­cure­ment Regime (NNPR) Se­ries de­signed to as­sist pol­i­cy­mak­ers, pub­lic ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship, pro­cure­ment pro­fes­sion­als and bid­ders in nav­i­gat­ing new com­pli­ance and lit­i­ga­tion risks while trans­form­ing pro­cure­ment gov­er­nance to max­i­mize Val­ue for Pub­lic Mon­ey (Vf­PM).

Dr. Mar­garet Rose is an at­tor­ney at law, Head of the Satya Ju­ris Cham­bers and Man­ag­ing Con­sul­tant at Pro­cure­ment Com­pli­ance Plus. For more in­for­ma­tion vis­it: https://pro­cure­ment­com­pli­ance.com and email mrose@pro­cure­ment­com­pli­ance.com