PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The Pro­cure­ment bill will be de­bate in Par­lia­ment in Feb­ru­ary, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert an­nounced dur­ing the Post Cab­i­net Press Brief­ing yes­ter­day.

Im­bert de­nied me­dia re­ports that he had pro­cure­ment rules for the amend­ment sim­ply lan­guish­ing on his desk, and spent a por­tion of time at the brief­ing ex­plain­ing that there had been an ex­tend­ed back and forth be­tween his Min­istry and the chief reg­u­la­tor con­cern­ing claus­es in the bill up to De­cem­ber 18, two days af­ter Par­lia­ment last con­vened.

"We had had a lot of dis­cus­sion stretch­ing over quite a long pe­ri­od over the lat­ter half of 2019. This is my­self, my staff and the of­fice of the pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor as to whether or not sec­tion 7 of the pub­lic pro­cure­ment and dis­pos­al of pub­lic prop­er­ty act should be amend­ed to ex­clude those two types of pro­cure­ment for the purview of the of­fice of pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tions," he said.

Those claus­es re­lat­ed to Gov­ern­ment to Gov­er­ment agree­ments and dis­pos­al of as­sets in­clu­sive of re­al prop­er­ty.

"So what the reg­u­la­tor even­tu­al­ly said on the 18th of De­cem­ber is you need to amend the act or we propos­ing that you amend the act to re­move the func­tion for dis­pos­al of pub­lic prop­er­ty from the of­fice of pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tion but with re­spect to the oth­er mat­ter that we have been dis­cussing for some time, we think we should just leave the act as it is. And the back sto­ry to that is that they will try to man­age the sit­u­a­tion," said Im­bert.

How­ev­er, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter ex­plained that they want­ed to prop­er­ly amend the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act to avoid any po­ten­tial com­pli­ca­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly with in­ter­gov­ern­men­tal arrange­ments.

"There­fore we will be go­ing to the Par­lia­ment when the Par­lia­ment is avail­able in Feb­ru­ary of this year 2020, to ad­dress that whole ques­tion of how Gov­ern­ment to Gov­ern­ment agree­ments for the sup­ply of goods and ser­vices are ad­dressed. We don't think it should be left open be­cause it is sub­ject to tremen­dous in­ter­pre­ta­tion, am­bi­gu­i­ty and con­fu­sion so we're go­ing to clar­i­fy the law with re­spect to Gov­ern­ment to Gov­ern­ment arrange­ments," he said.

He then ques­tioned giv­en the time­line of the dis­cus­sion, if he had in­deed failed to act on the pro­posed reg­u­la­tions.

"The point I want to make is, if the Par­lia­ment went on re­cess on the 16th of De­cem­ber, and if the Par­lia­ment can­not con­vene to de­bate the reg­u­la­tions un­til Feb­ru­ary 2020. Then what is this sto­ry about? These thing sit­ting on my desk for 134 days? And if I re­ceived a let­ter from the reg­u­la­tors set­tling these mat­ters on the 18th of De­cem­ber, two days af­ter the Par­lia­ment went on re­cess then what is talk about this thing sit­ting on my desk for 134 days?"

Im­bert con­firmed that Par­lia­ment will re­con­vene on Jan­u­ary 24, at the Red House. He ex­plained the first

mat­ter to be ad­dressed, on the 27th will be the clos­ing of the ac­counts for fis­cal 2019. He ex­plained those ac­counts must be closed with­in four months of the end of the fi­nan­cial year mak­ing the dead­line Jan­u­ary 31, 2020.

Fol­low­ing the set­tle­ment of this mat­ter, Im­bert said the Pro­cure­ment bill will be de­bat­ed.