Gov­ern­ment will this week bring a bill be­fore Par­lia­ment seek­ing to cor­rect “im­prac­ti­cal” pro­vi­sions of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Pro­cure­ment Act 2015.

The bill, which will be con­sid­ered by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Wednes­day, seeks to cor­rect an in­cor­rect cross-ref­er­ence in­clud­ed in the leg­is­la­tion when it was amend­ed in 2020.

The 2020 amend­ment was sup­posed to re­quire an af­fir­ma­tive res­o­lu­tion from Par­lia­ment when­ev­er the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance seeks to ex­clude oth­er ser­vices pro­vid­ed to pub­lic bod­ies and State-con­trolled en­ter­pris­es from the pro­vi­sions of the leg­is­la­tion. Le­gal, fi­nan­cial, ac­count­ing, and med­ical ser­vices pro­vid­ed to pub­lic bod­ies and State-con­trolled en­ter­pris­es are au­to­mat­i­cal­ly ex­empt.

How­ev­er, the af­fir­ma­tive res­o­lu­tion re­quire­ment mis­tak­en­ly ref­er­enced a sec­tion deal­ing with ex­emp­tions re­lat­ed to mat­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

Last week, so­cial and po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj threat­ened to file an in­ter­pre­ta­tion law­suit af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert is­sued a three-month ex­emp­tion or­der pur­suant to the leg­is­la­tion re­lat­ed to ser­vices pro­vid­ed for vis­its from for­eign and re­gion­al dig­ni­taries. The or­der was re­lat­ed to the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment Sum­mit which cost an es­ti­mat­ed $9 mil­lion.

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue at a press con­fer­ence last Wednes­day, Im­bert de­nied any wrong­do­ing as he point­ed out that he is­sued a sim­i­lar or­der in May to cater for the costs as­so­ci­at­ed with a se­questered ju­ry.

He said based on the ad­vice he was get­ting, there was need for “a prop­er­ly thought-out amend­ment to al­low the Gov­ern­ment to deal with un­fore­seen events” which will take some time.

The cor­rec­tion of the er­ror is like­ly to be a con­tentious is­sue as Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to make ex­emp­tions de­cid­ed by the Fi­nance Min­is­ter sub­ject to neg­a­tive res­o­lu­tion as op­posed to af­fir­ma­tive.

With af­fir­ma­tive res­o­lu­tions, Par­lia­men­tary ap­proval is re­quired for the ex­emp­tions to take ef­fect, while with neg­a­tive res­o­lu­tions the ex­emp­tion will be valid un­less re­ject­ed by Par­lia­ment with­in a set time.

Gov­ern­ment sought to in­tro­duce a neg­a­tive res­o­lu­tion in the 2020 amend­ment but it re­vert­ed to an af­fir­ma­tive res­o­lu­tion af­ter com­plaints from the Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors.

The bill to be de­bat­ed this week will al­so seek to in­tro­duce a new sec­tion al­low­ing up to $1 mil­lion in ex­pen­di­ture on goods and ser­vices to be ex­empt from the pro­cure­ment pro­vi­sions.

It will al­so seek to ex­tend the pow­ers of the Fi­nance Min­is­ter to de­cide on reg­u­la­tions and pro­ce­dures for the pro­cure­ment of such goods and ser­vices by al­low­ing him to act at his own dis­cre­tion as op­posed to on­ly af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor.

It al­so seeks to change the re­quire­ment for af­fir­ma­tive res­o­lu­tion of such reg­u­la­tions to neg­a­tive res­o­lu­tion.

The last clause seeks to retroac­tive­ly val­i­date the pre­vi­ous ex­emp­tion or­ders is­sued by Im­bert, ear­li­er this year.