Dana-Marie Smith
A supplier can spend money preparing a bid, lose the contract and have to decide whether it can afford to ask if the process was lawful. Under the proposed Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property (Amendment) Bill, 2026, that decision could become more expensive and the time available to make it much shorter.
That should concern everyone who pays taxes in Trinidad and Tobago. A supplier’s challenge may begin with a lost commercial opportunity but may expose a failure in how public money is spent. The Bill’s provisions widen exemptions, restrict intervention following investigations and make the challenge process more financially daunting. The danger is that wrongdoing becomes harder to contest precisely when scrutiny is most needed.
Clause 6 would expressly empower the Office of Procurement Regulation (OPR) to require payment of a procuring entity’s legal costs in responding to a supplier’s challenge. The power is discretionary, but the proposed paragraph does not expressly confine costs to frivolous, vexatious or abusive proceedings. If the purpose is to deter abuse, Parliament should say so.
The information imbalance makes that risk troubling. A supplier may suspect an undisclosed criterion, inconsistent scoring or preferential treatment without possessing the records needed to establish it.
Debriefings can provide explanations before a challenge, but they are not unrestricted disclosure of the procurement file.
Section 50(5) requires the procuring entity to give the OPR effective access to the procurement documents after notification of a review application. That is access for the regulator; it is not an automatic guarantee that the supplier receives every document. A supplier may therefore have to initiate proceedings before obtaining the material needed to test its concerns properly.
An unsuccessful challenge does not prove that the supplier was reckless, sometimes a reasonable concern cannot be established on the evidence. Requiring a business to take that initial risk while exposing it to the other side’s costs gives it a powerful reason to think twice, even where the concern deserves investigation.
Preparing a serious bid requires staff time, technical advice, site visits, designs and detailed costing, without any guarantee of an award. Those resources have already been committed before the business considers challenging the outcome. For a small enterprise, the additional possibility of an adverse costs order competes directly with wages, stock and capital.
The existing section 50(10)(g) provides limited compensation for suppliers’ costs arising from noncompliant procurement. That does not make the parties financially equal. Formal reciprocity does not resolve practical inequality: the same costs risk can be a manageable expense for a public body and a threat to a small supplier’s ability to stay in business. Equality on paper offers little protection to a business priced out of enforcing its rights.
Clause 9 would then shorten the initial standstill period, the pause before the successful submission can be accepted, from 10 to 15 working days to 5 to 10 working days. Those days are needed to obtain a debriefing, gather documents, potentially retain counsel, receive advice and decide whether to challenge.
Suppliers are businesspeople, not procurement-law specialists waiting to diagnose a breach. Section 50(2)(b)(i) makes the applicable standstill period a filing window for challenges. Reducing it therefore affects access to a remedy.
The Bill asks suppliers to make a more expensive decision with less time to investigate it. That combination demands an explanation. What public interest is served by rushing the decision to challenge while increasing the price of getting it wrong? What is the problem this change is supposed to solve?
Fewer challenges would be no measure of success if suppliers have simply become afraid to bring them.
Clause 7 exempts procurement up to TT$2 million by the Permanent Secretaries, chief executive officers and accounting officers of State-controlled enterprises or statutory bodies. Municipal corporation chief executive officers would have a separate TT$500,000 threshold.
The existing TT$1 million exemption is subject to regulations under section 63. The Bill removes that qualification and revokes the Simplified Procurement Regulations, 2024. The change is more consequential than an adjustment to a dollar figure, it also removes the procedural framework presently attached to simplified procurement.
It is clear that $2 million is not loose change. Fiscal pressure makes disciplined spending more urgent. When resources are constrained, the argument for protecting value for money becomes stronger.
The proposed section 58A retains a duty to report contracts to the OPR. But a report that money has been committed cannot substitute for enforceable rules governing who received the opportunity and they were chosen. The section itself specifies neither a reporting deadline nor the information to be supplied. The question is whether the remaining safeguards can prevent abuse, not simply record an award.
Reduced scrutiny creates room for favouritism and corruption. A capable supplier should not have to compete against a friendship, a family connection or political access that an opaque process allows to prevail. Nor should taxpayers have to accept the risk of paying more for less. The objection does not require assuming that every public officer is dishonest. It requires recognising why public procurement rules exist.
Clause 5 raises an equally serious concern. In consequence of a Part IV complaint or investigation, the OPR would be prohibited from taking the listed corrective steps, including suspending procurement or contract performance, requiring decisions to be reconsidered, directing re-evaluation, or setting aside an award. Its recommendations under that Part would be expressly advisory and non-binding.
Suppose an investigation reveals compelling evidence of corruption? The proposed prohibitions contain no exception for that discovery. Through the Part IV process, the OPR could identify serious wrongdoing yet be barred from the steps needed to stop or correct the procurement. An investigation should lead to a practical means of protecting public money. A recommendation that can be disregarded does not provide that protection.
Section 45’s duty to report suspected offences to the DPP remains. Referring possible criminal conduct does not itself halt a contract or correct an award. Parliament must explain how urgent harm would be prevented while other processes take their course.
The protection of public money cannot depend on whether a disappointed bidder has enough cash, information and time to litigate. A supplier may decide that it cannot afford the fight. Independent regulation must protect the public even when no private business can carry that burden.
Furthermore, Clause 4 would add energy, including natural gas and oil; national security; public-private partnerships for public housing; specified emergency utility procurement; and emergency acquisitions of goods, services or works.
Energy, national security and public-housing partnerships are separate categories without the emergency condition attached to them. The proposed TT$2 million threshold does not limit these section exemptions and the wording would exclude the Act itself for the relevant procurement, rather than merely simplify a procedure.
A debate confined to the TT$2 million figure would therefore miss a larger issue; these categories carry no monetary ceiling in the proposed provision. Parliament should explain why procurement in such significant areas of public activity should be placed beyond this statutory framework, and what enforceable protection would take its place. Urgency and confidentiality can justify tailored procedures.
They do not, without more, justify exclusions of this breadth. Emergency purchasing can be fast while still requiring written reasons, records and independent review. The Bill’s emergency definition does require an exceptional and unforeseeable situation. That condition matters, but so does the ability to test whether it was properly invoked.
Proposed section 7(6)(j) would also let the Minister determine further exempt procurement without the existing requirement for the OPR’s recommendation or agreement. The independent regulator’s statutory role in that decision disappears. Why remove that safeguard at the very moment the exemption power is being widened?
Why revoke the Simplified Procurement Regulations without providing a replacement? They already ease procurement requirements while preserving safeguards against abuse. Clauses 8 and 10 would remove the regime and its specific statutory support; clause 7’s reporting duty cannot replace those protections. The Bill neither supplies a replacement nor requires one before revocation. Any intended replacement should be published alongside it.
There is a credible route to faster procurement. Identify where delays occur, train procurement officers, issue clear documents and require prompt explanations of award decisions. Preserve enough time for suppliers to obtain advice. If adverse costs are intended to deter abuse, define that abuse and protect reasonable challenges brought in good faith.
Give the regulator a clear, fair and effective route to stop serious harm revealed by an investigation, with appropriate protections for affected parties. Keep exemptions narrow and justified. Require timely reporting, disclosure of conflicts and independent scrutiny. Where procedures need simplification, put the replacement safeguards in place before the existing ones are removed.
Public money is money entrusted by taxpayers to institutions that must answer for its use. If suppliers are deterred from challenging, categories of procurement are exempted, and investigations cannot produce corrective action, an unlawful award becomes harder to stop. The harm can reach far beyond the bidder who lost, it can mean money unavailable for a classroom, a health clinic or a reliable water supply. The silence of suppliers who cannot afford to challenge will not prove that procurement is clean. It will mean the country has made accountability too expensive, leaving taxpayers to pay for the silence.
Dana-Marie Smith is an Attorney-at-Law, Senior Associate and Procurement Probity Advisor with Procurement Compliance Plus and Satya Juris Chambers. Her work focuses on legal advisory services, procurement compliance and promoting integrity in public procurement.
