Dr Mar­garet Rose

Bud­gets tell us how a gov­ern­ment in­tends to spend. Gov­er­nance tells us whether that spend­ing will stand up to scruti­ny. This year’s Bud­get, with lit­tle fan­fare, in­tro­duced two new en­ti­ties, the Fi­nan­cial Over­sight and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (FOAC) and the Eco­nom­ic Re­silience Coun­cil (ERC) meant to bring dis­ci­pline and fore­sight to the front end of de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

The FOAC, chaired by the Prime Min­is­ter, will “re­view, ap­prove, and mon­i­tor all ma­jor Bud­get Items” across min­istries and screen ma­jor ex­pens­es be­fore Cab­i­net. The ERC, chaired by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, will “over­see the fi­nan­cial eval­u­a­tion and ap­proval” of eco­nom­ic strate­gies, bor­row­ings, in­vest­ments, and projects over $50 mil­lion. The re­mit of these com­mit­tees is framed at a pol­i­cy and pri­ori­ti­sa­tion lev­el. How­ev­er, with­out clear op­er­a­tional guardrails, they could drift in­to trans­ac­tion­al ter­ri­to­ry, the do­main of the PPDP­PA, es­pe­cial­ly around ven­dor en­gage­ment, project eval­u­a­tion, or con­tract ap­proval.

These are bold in­sti­tu­tion­al moves that could strength­en co­or­di­na­tion and bring much-need­ed co­her­ence to fis­cal pol­i­cy. But they al­so sit on a knife-edge be­tween sys­tem and state­craft, be­tween law­ful over­sight and func­tion­al in­ter­fer­ence. Where they ul­ti­mate­ly fall will de­pend on the lev­el of trans­paren­cy with­in which they op­er­ate and the com­mit­ment of their mem­bers to the rule of law.

Where Law Meets Lead­er­ship

T&T now op­er­ates un­der the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act (2015) (as amend­ed) (PPDP­PA) – which draws bright, en­force­able lines, re­mov­ing board in­flu­ence and sit­u­at­ing pro­cure­ment re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty be­neath the Ac­count­ing Of­fi­cer (AO) and Named Pro­cure­ment Of­fi­cer (NPO).

Among oth­er things, it crim­i­nalis­es any ap­proach to a mem­ber of a procur­ing en­ti­ty “with re­spect to any mat­ter that is be­fore that en­ti­ty or ex­pect­ed to come be­fore it” (sec­tion 59), and pro­hibits con­duct that “di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly in­flu­ences” pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings to ob­tain an un­fair ad­van­tage (sec­tion 60). AOs and NPOs face per­son­al li­a­bil­i­ty if they con­sent or fail to ex­er­cise rea­son­able dili­gence to pre­vent breach­es.

If FOAC “re­views and ap­proves” ma­jor bud­get items be­fore Cab­i­net, does that make it a de fac­to eval­u­a­tion body? If the ERC “over­sees fi­nan­cial ap­proval” for projects above $50 mil­lion, does it dis­place the statu­to­ry roles of those of­fi­cers who are legal­ly re­spon­si­ble for pro­cure­ment de­ci­sions?

Even a well-meant con­ver­sa­tion about a pre­ferred con­trac­tor could con­sti­tute an un­law­ful “ap­proach” un­der sec­tion 59 or an at­tempt to “in­flu­ence” pro­ceed­ings un­der sec­tion 60. That is how eas­i­ly com­pli­ance bound­aries blur when po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sion-mak­ers, how­ev­er well-in­ten­tioned, en­ter the pro­cure­ment are­na.

Of course, as elect­ed of­fi­cials act­ing on be­half of the peo­ple of T&T, it would be non­sen­si­cal to sug­gest that elect­ed of­fi­cials have no role in pub­lic pro­cure­ment gov­er­nance and de­ci­sion-mak­ing. They must. The ques­tion is: where does law­ful over­sight end and crim­i­nal in­ter­fer­ence be­gin?

The miss­ing reg­u­la­tor

To date, the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) has of­fered no com­ment on these new en­ti­ties or the po­ten­tial blur­ring of ac­count­abil­i­ty. The OPR’s pow­ers to ap­prove Spe­cial Guide­lines un­der sec­tion 13(1)(e) of the Act, seem to be very rel­e­vant here. The OPR should en­cour­age these com­mit­tees to seek such ap­proval to align their re­mit with the ex­ist­ing frame­work.

How­ev­er, more than two years af­ter full procla­ma­tion, on last checks no Spe­cial Guide­lines ap­pear to have been ap­proved by the OPR. The vac­u­um is pal­pa­ble. The OPR may hold the view that all pub­lic bod­ies and all pro­cure­ment trans­ac­tions should be con­duct­ed in the same way. Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the re­al­i­ty of good pub­lic pro­cure­ment. A hos­pi­tal pur­chas­ing ra­di­ol­o­gy equip­ment, an en­er­gy SOE con­tract­ing for off­shore main­te­nance, and the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion build­ing an e-pay­ments plat­form each op­er­ate un­der dis­tinct tech­ni­cal, le­gal, and risk pro­files. With­out sec­tor-spe­cif­ic guid­ance, whether for clin­i­cal tri­als, high-haz­ard works, or da­ta-sov­er­eign­ty stan­dards, uni­form rules can sti­fle per­for­mance, de­lay de­liv­ery, and ul­ti­mate­ly erode Val­ue for Pub­lic Mon­ey (Vf­PM). With­out OPR-is­sued guid­ance, the FOAC and ERC could in­ad­ver­tent­ly as­sume func­tions the Act as­signs to AOs and NPOs.

Pub­lic-Pri­vate Part­ner­ships: The ex­posed zone

One area where reg­u­la­to­ry si­lence is most con­spic­u­ous is Pub­lic-Pri­vate Part­ner­ships (PPPs). The Act de­fines a PPP as a con­tract where a pri­vate par­ty de­liv­ers a pub­lic func­tion, re­ceives com­pen­sa­tion from pub­lic funds or user charges, and bears op­er­a­tional risk (Sec­tion 4). These are not or­di­nary pro­cure­ments. They span decades, in­volve com­plex risk trans­fer, com­plex val­ue con­sid­er­a­tions and of­ten shape na­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture, the very types of projects like­ly to at­tract FOAC and ERC at­ten­tion.

Yet there are still no PPP-spe­cif­ic reg­u­la­tions, hand­books, or OPR guide­lines. If gov­ern­ment is se­ri­ous about at­tract­ing cap­i­tal and ca­pa­bil­i­ty in­to pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture, es­pe­cial­ly in cli­mate, health, tourism and dig­i­tal sec­tors, it must build a regime that re­wards, not pun­ish­es, ear­ly pri­vate sec­tor ini­tia­tive. The OPR should de­vel­op guid­ance that pro­tects pro­pri­etary in­no­va­tion, clar­i­fies when di­rect ne­go­ti­a­tion is law­ful, and recog­nis­es that not all val­ue-for-pub­lic-mon­ey out­comes arise from com­pet­i­tive process­es.

With­out clear bound­aries be­tween sys­tem gov­er­nance and pro­cure­ment ex­e­cu­tion, PPPs, the most promis­ing in­stru­ments for in­no­va­tion and pub­lic-val­ue cre­ation, could be­come the most ex­posed zone for over­reach.

Three es­sen­tial guardrails

To bring clar­i­ty and con­fi­dence to this evolv­ing ar­chi­tec­ture, three guardrails de­serve im­me­di­ate con­sid­er­a­tion:

1 | Write the fire­wall in­to their char­ters.

FOAC and ERC should adopt ex­plic­it non-in­ter­fer­ence claus­es: they will not com­ment on, in­struct, or oth­er­wise en­gage with any pro­cure­ment process, eval­u­a­tion, short­list, or award de­ci­sion. Their re­mit is pol­i­cy, pri­ori­ti­sa­tion, and per­for­mance, not ven­dor se­lec­tion. Where di­rec­tion is re­quired for state en­ter­pris­es, it must trav­el through the share­hold­er route (Cor­po­ra­tion Sole), us­ing law­ful, doc­u­ment­ed in­struc­tions con­sis­tent with the Duo­mat­ic prin­ci­ple af­firmed by the Privy Coun­cil in Ciban Man­age­ment v Cit­co (BVI) Ltd (2020). That said, note that even Duo­mat­ic di­rec­tives can­not over­ride the law as not­ed in SporTT v Padding­ton et ors (2025).

2 | Pub­lish what you can, quick­ly.

Trust grows when trans­paren­cy is rou­tine, not re­ac­tive. With­in 30 days of for­ma­tion, both bod­ies should pub­lish their Terms of Ref­er­ence, mem­ber­ship, and meet­ing sum­maries, along with a quar­ter­ly score­board of all projects over $50 mil­lion show­ing stage, cost, and time vari­ance. Trans­paren­cy that pro­tects con­fi­den­tial pric­ing and com­pa­ny in­for­ma­tion builds con­fi­dence in de­liv­ery.

3 | Equip the front line.

The Draft Es­ti­mates con­firm that more en­ti­ties now have Pro­cure­ment Of­fi­cers on es­tab­lish­ment, a good sign of law meet­ing ca­pac­i­ty. Let’s dou­ble down. Train Boards, Ac­count­ing Of­fi­cers, and PDACs to in­ter­act with FOAC and ERC safe­ly. The OPR should is­sue Spe­cial Guide­lines un­der sec­tion 13 to clar­i­fy those in­ter­faces and pro­vide out­comes-ori­ent­ed guid­ance that helps teams solve prob­lems with­out be­ing paral­ysed by process.

Rais­ing the Bar

The PPDP­PA was nev­er meant to bury pub­lic bod­ies in red tape. Its pur­pose was to em­bed dis­cre­tion with­in a dis­ci­plined, au­ditable sys­tem that max­imis­es val­ue for pub­lic mon­ey while pre­serv­ing pub­lic trust. Seen through that lens, FOAC and ERC can be­come in­stru­ments of co­her­ence rather than con­fu­sion, but on­ly if the OPR per­forms its statu­to­ry role as sys­tem ar­chi­tect.

The OPR need not wait for cri­sis or com­plaint. It can demon­strate reg­u­la­to­ry ma­tu­ri­ty by con­ven­ing meet­ings of elect­ed of­fi­cials, defin­ing the in­ter­face be­tween sys­tem over­sight and pro­cure­ment trans­ac­tions, and pub­lish­ing mod­el Spe­cial Guide­lines as soon as pos­si­ble.

The test of this new ar­chi­tec­ture will not be how much we spend or what we spend on, but how wise­ly we build the sys­tems that make spend­ing count. If we can align law, lead­er­ship, and sys­tem learn­ing, Trinidad and To­ba­go can move from com­pli­ance to co­her­ence, and from co­her­ence to the cre­ation, pro­tec­tion and max­i­miza­tion of re­al pub­lic val­ue: the ul­ti­mate goal of the PPDP­PA.

About The NNPR Se­ries

This ar­ti­cle is part of the Nav­i­gat­ing the New Pro­cure­ment Regime (NNPR) se­ries de­signed to as­sist pol­i­cy­mak­ers, pub­lic ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship, pro­cure­ment pro­fes­sion­als and bid­ders in nav­i­gat­ing new com­pli­ance and lit­i­ga­tion risks while trans­form­ing pro­cure­ment gov­er­nance to achieve strate­gic in­no­va­tion and best Val­ue for Pub­lic Mon­ey.

Dr Mar­garet Satya Rose is an at­tor­ney at law, Head of Satya Ju­ris Cham­bers/founder & man­ag­ing con­sul­tant at Pro­cure­ment Com­pli­ance Plus, a mul­ti-ju­ris­dic­tion con­sult­ing firm lever­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy, com­mu­ni­ty and in­no­va­tion for bet­ter pro­cure­ment out­comes. Dr Rose can be con­tact­ed at mrose@pro­cure­ment­com­pli­an­ce­plus.com