It is dis­ap­point­ing that the pro­tract­ed and cir­cuitous ef­fort to es­tab­lish a prop­er pro­cure­ment regime in this coun­try is still on­go­ing.

Al­though the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, 2015, was as­sent­ed to sev­en years ago and sub­se­quent­ly amend­ed by the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment) Act, 2016, it has on­ly been par­tial­ly pro­claimed.

This sor­ry sit­u­a­tion was re­vealed by Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor Mooni­lal Lalchan who, in tes­ti­mo­ny be­fore Par­lia­ment’s Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee (PAC) on Wednes­day, de­scribed the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) as “tooth­less.”

This is an en­ti­ty which, ac­cord­ing to the act, will con­duct au­dits and pe­ri­od­ic in­spec­tions of pub­lic bod­ies, is­sue di­rec­tions to them and, where ap­plic­a­ble, fines of up to $100,000 can be im­posed for fail­ure to com­ply.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, af­ter all this time the OPR is still un­able to do that and, there­fore, can­not chal­lenge com­pa­nies that fail to ad­here to prop­er pro­cure­ment prac­tices.

Mr Lalchan told the PAC that the OPR has not been able to re­spond to re­quests to in­ves­ti­gate 18 mat­ters or send find­ings to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions in in­stances where breach­es have been dis­cov­ered.

This is un­ac­cept­able in a coun­try with well-doc­u­ment­ed cas­es of cor­rup­tion in­volv­ing pub­lic funds and a his­to­ry of stop and start at­tempts to in­tro­duce an­ti-cor­rup­tion and pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion dat­ing as far back as 1997.

Af­ter all those years, the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion of the par­tial procla­ma­tion of Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act means that the 60-year-old Cen­tral Ten­ders Board Act, chap. 72:91 has not yet been re­pealed and re­placed.

By now the OPR should have had full over­sight of pub­lic pro­cure­ment and dis­pos­al con­tracts which its staff has been dili­gent­ly prepar­ing to take on since 2019.

At the time that the Act was as­sent­ed to in Jan­u­ary 2014, the na­tion was told that par­tial procla­ma­tion of the leg­is­la­tion was nec­es­sary to prop­er­ly es­tab­lish the new pub­lic pro­cure­ment scheme, in­clud­ing the ap­point­ment of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor and set­ting up the OPR.

One would have thought by now that all op­er­a­tions, func­tions, posts, and pro­to­cols would have been ful­ly in place. In­stead, af­ter sev­en years, T&T is await­ing the promised “seam­less ad­just­ment” to this long-need­ed pro­cure­ment regime.

Pro­cure­ment laws ex­ist to en­sure an open, fair, and com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment process to en­sure val­ue for mon­ey, pre­vent cor­rup­tion and in­crease com­pe­ti­tion—ob­jec­tives that should be top pri­or­i­ties for any ad­mi​nis­tra­tion.

How long must this na­tion linger on the cusp of sound pro­cure­ment pol­i­cy and prac­tice? Why wasn’t full procla­ma­tion of the act giv­en high­er pri­or­i­ty?

Now more than ever, af­ter years of de­clin­ing rev­enue and eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion ​ex­ac­er­bat­ed by two years of a glob­al pan­dem­ic, there is a need to re­duce pub­lic ex­pen­di­ture, waste, de­lays, and in­ef­fi­cien­cy.

This is some­thing which should be ap­pre­ci­at­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert un­der whose purview the OPR falls. Hope­ful­ly, fol­low­ing to­day’s sit­ting of Par­lia­ment, the fi­nal hur­dle in the way of full im­ple­men­ta­tion will be crossed.