Minister Imbert continues hisprocurement procrastination

THE EDITOR: In 2016 the Finance Minister said in his budget speech, "The previous administration in its supreme arrogance spent five years talking loudly about procurement, but true to form, they ended their tenure without putting new and modern systems of procurement into place. This PNM administration will cut out this cancer of corruption and waste as we fulfil our commitment to the people of Trinidad and Tobago to implement a modern, transparent and fair public procurement system in 2016."

Imbert followed this up in his 2017 budget speech with, "We envisage that by early 2018 the legislation will be operational." Again in 2019 the population was served up this platitude from the Finance Minister, "The new procurement regime utilising best practice could be in place in the first quarter of calendar 2019."

Last year, in his 2020 budget speech, like a recurring decimal, we were told, "Madam Speaker, with the Office of the Procurement Regulator already in place, the soon-to-be proclaimed Procurement Act and the associated making of regulations, which are subject to affirmative resolution of Parliament, will ensure that government decisions will be transparently managed, adding significant value for money in the procurement of goods and services."

On Monday, only the extremely naive or fatally foolish would have been surprised to hear Imbert drone, "The Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property Act would become operational in 2022."

Whenever pressured by the public since 2015, after the previous administration passed the parent legislation before demitting office, the sitting Finance Minister was never shy to promise a date for operationalisation of the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property Act. It is very clear that he was and continues to prevaricate after six consecutive years in office about this critical and important legislation. The question is: are we ever going to see a fully operationalised Office of the Procurement Regulator with this finance minister at the helm? Is the Prime Minister in his supreme authority going to intervene?

Civil society and the public at large need to sit up and take heed and then take action. We now have another $9.1 billion deficit budget without the protection of an actively armed procurement regulator. Based on the information presented on Monday, the expenditure in public sector contracts can be as high as $5 billion in the coming fiscal year. TT ranks 85 out of 183 countries in the latest Corruption Perception Index (CPI) with a score of 40/100. How much of this public expenditure will haemorrhage due to pernicious, endemic corrupt practices within the public sector? Estimates indicate that as much as 30 per cent of expenditure in public sector contracts is lost to corruption in all of its forms. This can be upwards of $1 billion that can otherwise go to the delivery of services and infrastructure to the public.

Again, we ask the Prime Minister if he wants his legacy to be irrevocably linked to this ongoing, outrageous procrastination by his Finance Minister. If the answer is no, then we need the PM to make a public statement in this regard with a clear date for the parliamentary debate of the procurement regulations and a timetable for the full operationalisation of the Office of the Procurement Regulator.

FAZIR KHAN

president

Joint Council for the

Construction Industry