Pro­cure­ment of goods and ser­vices of up to $1 mil­lion will be ex­empt­ed from the re­quire­ments of the Pro­cure­ment Act ac­cord­ing to pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to amend the act which will be de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day.

This pro­vi­sion is con­tained in the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment and Val­i­da­tion Bill 2023).

The bill seeks to amend the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, No 1 of 2015.

And pro­vi­sions al­so seek to val­i­date cer­tain ac­tions tak­en in re­spect of statu­to­ry in­stru­ments made un­der the act. These per­tain to ex­emp­tion or­ders made by the Fi­nance Min­istry con­cern­ing mat­ters re­lat­ed to the re­cent Cari­com sum­mit and the Ju­di­cia­ry.

De­vel­op­ments arose af­ter UNC MP Sad­dam Ho­sein last week­end sought an ex­pla­na­tion from the Gov­ern­ment on an Or­der signed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert ex­empt­ing from the pro­cure­ment law, sup­pli­ers costs as­so­ci­at­ed with the vis­its of for­eign dig­ni­taries for three months. Im­bert sub­se­quent­ly de­fend­ed the or­der and not­ed an­oth­er such or­der which was done re­gard­ing Ju­di­cia­ry is­sues.

Cit­ing the pro­cure­ment law’s lengthy com­pound­ed process­es, Im­bert said the or­ders were nec­es­sary for the Cari­com sum­mit to be held. The Op­po­si­tion in­tends to seek le­gal ac­tion on the two ex­emp­tion or­ders.

On Thurs­day at a PNM meet­ing in Tu­na­puna, Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment had re­alised there were is­sues in the law and the Gov­ern­ment would use its ma­jor­i­ty to make sen­si­ble amend­ments to the law so it can func­tion in the pub­lic’s in­ter­est.

He said he di­rect­ed the Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness (in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives) Camille Robin­son-Reg­is to re­call Par­lia­ment next Wednes­day. The Par­lia­ment is cur­rent­ly on a mid-year break.

Fol­low­ing queries about what will be pre­sent­ed to Par­lia­ment next week, Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that one clause of the bill in­tro­duces a new sec­tion to pro­vide that the pro­cure­ment of goods and ser­vices of up to $1 mil­lion are ex­empt from the act. This ex­emp­tion will be sub­ject to reg­u­la­tions made by the min­is­ter.

An­oth­er clause would em­pow­er the min­is­ter to not on­ly act on the ad­vice of the of­fice but al­so at his own dis­cre­tion.

The clause al­so in­cludes reg­u­la­tions on the pro­ce­dures for the pro­cure­ment of goods and ser­vices of up to $1M.

Part of the bill al­so changes the re­quire­ment—which was made in the 2020 de­bate on the pro­cure­ment law–for the Or­der to be sub­ject to af­fir­ma­tive res­o­lu­tion, to now pro­vide that an Or­der will be sub­ject to neg­a­tive res­o­lu­tion of Par­lia­ment.

A fur­ther clause seeks to val­i­date any statu­to­ry in­stru­ments made and any ac­tions tak­en un­der those statu­to­ry in­stru­ments.

The clause would “deem the in­stru­ments and ac­tions tak­en to be law­ful­ly and valid­ly made and done to the ex­tent that they would have been law­ful­ly and valid­ly made and done if the in­stru­ments com­plied with the re­quire­ments of sec­tion 7(7)” of the act. This clause is ex­pect­ed to gov­ern the val­i­da­tion of the two ex­emp­tion or­ders on the is­sues con­cern­ing the Cari­com sum­mit and al­so the Ju­di­cia­ry.

Once the bill is passed, it is ex­pect­ed to be de­bat­ed in the Sen­ate next Fri­day, gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials said.