Both the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor have re­newed their com­mit­ment to mak­ing ful­ly op­er­a­tional the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Act cur­rent­ly await­ing full procla­ma­tion from Par­lia­ment.

The re­newed com­mit­ment and pledges of co­op­er­a­tion were made at a re­cent meet­ing be­tween At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs, Sen­a­tor Regi­nald Ar­mour SC, and Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor and Chair­man of the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion, Mooni­lal Lalchan.

The meet­ing was a di­rect fol­low-up on the State­ment made by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on 22 June 2022, con­cern­ing the cur­rent pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion pack­age, a re­lease from the AG’s Of­fice con­firmed.

Dis­cus­sions fo­cussed on sev­er­al “pri­or­i­ty ar­eas in­clud­ing the steps nec­es­sary for en­sur­ing that pub­lic and pub­lic/pri­vate en­ti­ties are ful­ly pre­pared and equipped for the procla­ma­tion of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Act, as well as the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the law, with ex­ten­sive sup­port from the OPR.”

Dur­ing the meet­ing, AG Ar­mour re­stat­ed Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment “to pro­claim the pub­lic pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion on the ba­sis of a prop­er­ly planned im­ple­men­ta­tion and op­er­a­tional­iza­tion of the law and shared in­for­ma­tive doc­u­ments with the OPR”.

Mean­while, Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor Lalchan ad­dressed the con­cerns raised pre­vi­ous­ly by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in his State­ment to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on 22 June 2022, and gave a com­mit­ment that the OPR would pro­vide “writ­ten up­dates and re­spons­es in the short­est time pos­si­ble.”

The OPR team al­so gave the AG and his team a de­tailed brief on OPR’s re­mit, as well as its progress in en­sur­ing, among oth­er things, the OPR’s Readi­ness As­sess­ment Check­list Da­ta.

The meet­ing be­tween the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor took place at the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs on Tues­day 12 Ju­ly 2022. 

It al­so in­clud­ed team mem­bers from the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor (OPR), as well as a team from the AG’s Min­istry, in­clud­ing Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs, Sen­a­tor Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal, and Vyana Shar­ma, Head/An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Unit of the Min­istry’s Team.  Since 2019, she has head­ed the AG Team’s li­ai­son and work with the OPR Team on the pub­lic pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion.