Some 95 pub­lic of­fi­cials from T&T and 18 from the re­gion have been ex­posed ex­posed to pro­cure­ment train­ing in a pro­gramme that will lead to suc­cess­ful par­tic­i­pants hold­ing a Lev­el 2 Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­vid­ed by Char­tered In­sti­tute for Pur­chas­ing and Sup­ply.

The first part of the train­ing was held at the Re­gion­al Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Con­fer­ence for Pub­lic Of­fi­cers, which was host­ed last month by the Gov­ern­ment of T&T (the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my, and the Min­istry of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS), and the In­ter-Amer­i­can Net­work on Gov­ern­ment.

The cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process in­volved an ex­am­i­na­tion at the end of four days of lec­tures and dis­cus­sions as well as a project that the par­tic­i­pants were sup­posed to work on for a month.

"The im­pact of the train­ing is go­ing to be far-reach­ing be­cause many of the of­fi­cials work­ing in pro­cure­ment in T&T have not ben­e­fit­ted from for­mal train­ing, let alone cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, which takes it to an even high­er lev­el," said IDB pro­cure­ment spe­cial­ist Shirley Maude Gayle. She added that the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion would give the pub­lic of­fi­cials an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nis­able and ac­cept­able qual­i­fi­ca­tion that is trans­fer­able and portable.

"More im­por­tant­ly, the train­ing is go­ing to ground the of­fi­cials in the tech­ni­cal foun­da­tions of pro­cure­ment prac­tice, which is what the UNDP CI­IPS pro­gramme does," Maude Gayle said.The con­fer­ence was held a few days af­ter the Sen­ate agreed to ac­cept the Re­port of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment for Re­forms to the Leg­isla­tive Frame­work for Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment, paving the way for im­mi­nent en­act­ment by Par­lia­ment.

In an ad­dress at the con­fer­ence, the IDB's T&T coun­try of­fi­cer, Michelle Cross Fen­ty praised "the sig­nif­i­cant strides made by the Gov­ern­ment in its ef­forts to mod­ernise the coun­try's leg­isla­tive frame­work for pub­lic pro­cure­ment, and the si­mul­ta­ne­ous recog­ni­tion for the need to build ca­pac­i­ty for im­proved pub­lic pro­cure­ment across the pub­lic sec­tor."

She al­so laud­ed the "strong and pos­i­tive lead­er­ship" pro­vid­ed by Plan­ning Min­is­ter Bhoe Tewarie, who chaired the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee that de­bat­ed T&T's Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Bill.

Cross Fen­ty said: "Min­is­ter Tewarie took re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the process, and as a re­sult of his per­sis­tent, de­ter­mined, trans­par­ent and in­clu­sive lead­er­ship, which was un­der­scored by his com­mit­ment to stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tion, the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of T&T was able to en­gen­der a high lev­el of col­lab­o­ra­tion, co­or­di­na­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, co-op­er­a­tion and con­sen­sus among key stake­hold­ers on this crit­i­cal piece of leg­is­la­tion.

"The IDB recog­nis­es and ap­pre­ci­ates that this is, in­deed, no small feat giv­en the great gulf which ex­ist­ed among key stake­hold­ers on some is­sues re­lat­ing to the mod­erni­sa­tion of the pub­lic pro­cure­ment leg­isla­tive frame­work."In an in­ter­view, Cross Fen­ty de­scribed as "ex­cel­lent" the con­sul­ta­tion and the con­sen­sus build­ing that took place on the pro­cure­ment bill. She likened the process of ar­riv­ing at a con­sen­sus to the leg­isla­tive process in the US, where she worked as an at­tor­ney, and in the UK.

With the T&T pro­cure­ment bill, she said that this in­volved lis­ten­ing to dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers and opin­ions and build­ing con­sen­sus with "not just the Gov­ern­ment, the pri­vate sec­tor, civ­il so­ci­ety and the lob­by groups."Asked whether the bill would be ef­fec­tive in mit­i­gat­ing cor­rup­tion, Cross Fen­ty said: "It cer­tain­ly has the right in­gre­di­ents. Hear­ing both Min­is­ter Tewarie and Min­is­ter Howai speak, I heard trans­paren­cy, in­tegri­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty in pub­lic pro­cure­ment.

"The trans­paren­cy will come from the fact that there will be pub­li­ca­tion of all doc­u­ments. In terms off ac­count­abil­i­ty, ag­griev­ed par­ties will have the abil­i­ty to raise is­sues. There is al­so whis­tle-blow­er pro­tec­tion built in­to the leg­is­la­tion."The IDB of­fi­cial said the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion al­so has the abil­i­ty to im­pact T&T's po­si­tion on the World Bank's com­pet­i­tive­ness in­dex "in terms of how fer­tile the coun­try is for for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment. These are the kinds of things that the out­side world looks at."

She said: "This is a mon­u­men­tal mo­ment in the his­to­ry of T&T and it would be very good to recog­nise that."But she added that any leg­is­la­tion is just the first step as it pro­vides the pol­i­cy be­hind what is be­ing leg­is­lat­ed. "But you have to look at the prac­ti­tion­ers, the pub­lic ser­vants and the oth­er of­fi­cials in­volved, which is where the con­fer­ence came in.

"It gave a fo­rum to the prac­ti­tion­ers, who got to meet their col­leagues from oth­er parts of the re­gion, swap­ping notes, dis­cussing com­mon is­sues and cre­at­ing a net­work that would al­low fur­ther shar­ing."The con­fer­ence al­so had the sup­port of Ko­re­an Gov­ern­ment, the Caribbean Re­gion­al Tech­ni­cal As­sis­tance Cen­tre (CAR­TAC), the Cana­di­an and UK high com­mis­sions and the UNDP, which con­duct­ed the train­ing pro­gramme.

On Fri­day, a group­ing of pri­vate sec­tor and civ­il so­ci­ety as­so­ci­a­tions not­ed that if the pro­cure­ment bill is not passed by the Low­er House of Par­lia­ment be­fore it pro­ceeds on its va­ca­tion break, the bill will lapse "re­quir­ing the process to start again with no guar­an­tee of com­ple­tion."The group­ing called on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to en­sure that the bill is de­bat­ed and passed be­fore the end of the cur­rent ses­sion of Par­lia­ment.