Sean Nero

Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz says pas­sage of the Pro­cure­ment Act in Par­lia­ment, be­fore year's end, will be a crit­i­cal move to­wards stamp­ing out cor­rupt prac­tices in the de­liv­ery of bil­lions of dol­lars in goods and ser­vices pur­chased for the T&T pop­u­lace by the Gov­ern­ment. The Sun­day Guardian, based on con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ments ob­tained over the past weeks, has been pub­lish­ing ex­pos&ea­cute;s on ques­tion­able pro­cure­ment prac­tices in var­i­ous state agen­cies. Cadiz said: "With the pro­cure­ment sys­tems all over the place, it (will) have all kinds of thiev­ing and mis­man­age­ment in that pro­cure­ment go­ing on. So when we talk about con­fi­dence and im­ple­men­ta­tion, we talk­ing about the Pro­cure­ment Act, which will bring e-auc­tion so the Gov­ern­ment spend would be stan­dard­ised." Cadiz said the pro­ce­dure used for pur­chas­ing by his min­istry was sure to dif­fer from that of the Health Min­istry, re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and cen­tral gov­ern­ment, too. He said: "And, if you go to any gov­ern­ment di­vi­sion, their pro­cure­ment rules and reg­u­la­tions are dif­fer­ent from the many sit­ting down right across the room. How could that be? How could a gov­ern­ment get val­ue for mon­ey for it cit­i­zens? "You will nev­er get rid of cor­rup­tion, Adam and Eve start­ed it. The fact of the mat­ter is you are go­ing to be able to re­duce the lev­el of cor­rup­tion to a lev­el where­by it is go­ing to be man­age­able."

De­vel­op­ing a stan­dard­ised pro­cure­ment sys­tem in the pub­lic sec­tor was tied to con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my, Cadiz said. As sim­ple as it looked, he said, build­ing con­fi­dence in the lo­cal econ­o­my was a sure way to im­prov­ing this coun­try's at­trac­tive­ness to for­eign in­vestors. "I know we had a loss of con­fi­dence, but when did this loss of con­fi­dence come in­to play? The loss of con­fi­dence was there even pri­or to the Gov­ern­ment com­ing in­to of­fice last year May. "How did we know? We saw it in the for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment fig­ures com­ing in­to Trinidad, from since 2008. We were al­ready see­ing that trend hap­pen­ing. And then of course, with an elec­tion, with (a) new ad­min­is­tra­tion com­ing in, you go back fur­ther again."

Lo­cal busi­ness­es must in­vest

Even though pri­or­i­ty is giv­en to for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment to bol­ster T&T's econ­o­my, the Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter un­der­scored that the lo­cal busi­ness sec­tor has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to in­vest at home, to nur­ture the much tout­ed growth need­ed. "Peo­ple talk about for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment and Gov­ern­ment wel­comed that with­out a doubt, be­cause re­al­ly and tru­ly that's where the big mon­ey is and that is re­al­ly and tru­ly go­ing to move the econ­o­my. "But if the lo­cal busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is not will­ing to put in and take the risk, what is go­ing to hap­pen? So we need to get that buy in. So when we talk about con­fi­dence and im­ple­men­ta­tion, I think one of the things this Gov­ern­ment has shown is that is gives val­ue for mon­ey," said Cadiz.

PP broke the mould

Ef­fec­tive May 25, 2010, he said, the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment broke, and threw away the mould of the pre­vi­ous regime. He claimed that for every sin­gle dol­lar that has been spent by this Gov­ern­ment, cit­i­zens have been get­ting val­ue for mon­ey. "We have been able to stretch a dol­lar. We have been able to get be­tween 30-50 per cent more out of the same dol­lar to achieve the same thing. So when we talk about con­fi­dence, that is one area that peo­ple have to look at. "The pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion boast­ed every time, how much mon­ey they spent. As soon as you heard any­body talk, it was boy we spent $100 mil­lion here, $40 bil­lion here. What they did was, they boast­ed how much mon­ey they could spend," he said. Cadiz added: "I don't know if you re­mem­ber the boast about how Trinidad ranked num­ber three in the world for pow­er con­sump­tion per capi­ta. We were up there with all the high en­er­gy users. We were us­ing more en­er­gy per capi­ta than so many oth­er coun­tries; the same thing with the spend."

Gov­er­nance

Nine­teen months have passed since the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar led Gov­ern­ment took of­fice, but Cadiz mused that for him, it felt like years. He ques­tioned the need for hav­ing more than 115 state-owned agen­cies and won­dered if they were ef­fi­cient or con­tribut­ing to a du­pli­ca­tion of tasks. "How much over­lap­ping is go­ing on? How much ex­tra costs are we talk­ing about and what about the in­ef­fi­cien­cies that these things cre­ate? He said based on his ex­pe­ri­ences so far, it was clear that for T&T to grow, the gov­er­nance style must be mod­ernised. "Does T&T have to be gov­erned the way it's gov­erned? Many of us have grown up in this par­tic­u­lar style of gov­er­nance, and I'm not talk­ing about rad­i­cal change. What I'm talk­ing about is how do we get val­ue for mon­ey? How do we get ser­vices to the cit­i­zens of this coun­try? How do we cre­ate con­fi­dence, how do we im­ple­ment every sin­gle thing that the Gov­ern­ment is sup­pose to?" he asked. Cadiz said: "When you are talk­ing about sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and re­al eco­nom­ic progress that is what you are talk­ing about; peo­ple will view T&T as a re­al place to do busi­ness. It's not just about the en­er­gy com­pa­nies. The en­er­gy com­pa­nies can work any­where in this world. They could go in the Sa­hara, the Ar­tic. They don't care where they are go­ing, once it has oil and gas."