Rapheal John-Lall

An amend­ment to the Draft Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Bill will take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion mat­ters of pro­cure­ment in gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment agree­ments, said Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie.

"The amend­ment of the bill would take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion key is­sues that have been in con­tention. The amend­ment will ac­knowl­edge the sov­er­eign­ty of the state and the rights of gov­ern­ments elect­ed to en­gage oth­er gov­ern­ments in treaties and agree­ments. But that clause will take in­to ac­count in the mat­ter of pro­cure­ment that the law on pro­cure­ment does ap­ply. I think we have found a for­mu­la of bal­anc­ing these two is­sues," he told the Busi­ness Guardian.

De­bate on the bill is ex­pect­ed to be­gin in the Sen­ate next Tues­day.

Win­ston Ri­ley, chair­man of the Pub­lic Sec­tor/Civ­il So­ci­ety Group on Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment, had raised con­cerns about Clause 7 of the bill.

Tewarie said he had dis­cus­sions with the group and has found a mid­dle ground on some of the more con­tentious is­sues.

In April, Ri­ley told the Busi­ness Guardian Clause 7 of the bill was "dis­turb­ing" and that the gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment clause should be re­moved.

"Clause 7 states that the act does not ap­ply to the pro­cure­ment of goods works or ser­vices aris­ing out of a treaty to which T&T is a par­ty with one or more states or with an in­ter­na­tion­al lend­ing agency. Any in­ter­na­tion­al treaty that has to do with goods or ser­vices is out­side the bill. The Prime Min­ster just came back from Chi­na with bil­lions of dol­lars worth of in­vest­ment. There are oth­er gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments on the cards with Aus­tria and Cana­da," Ri­ley had said.

Tewarie said the main ob­jec­tives of the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion is to pro­mote ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, val­ue for mon­ey, ef­fi­cien­cy, lo­cal in­dus­try de­vel­op­ment and sus­tain­able pro­cure­ment.

"The bill al­so speaks about a pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor that is in­de­pen­dent of any min­istry and ap­point­ed by the pres­i­dent of the coun­try. It al­so speaks about the Pro­cure­ment Board be­ing ap­point­ed by the pres­i­dent. The pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor is in­de­pen­dent of any po­lit­i­cal of­fice and an­swers di­rect­ly to Par­lia­ment," he said.

Tewarie spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian on Tues­day at his of­fice in the Min­istry of Plan­ning, Er­ic Williams Fi­nan­cial Com­plex, In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain.

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