Time to get the “show on the road” with the Pro­cure­ment law which will be pro­claimed next month and all state en­ter­pris­es must com­ply or face se­ri­ous con­se­quences.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in­di­cat­ed this in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, pi­lot­ing reg­u­la­tions need­ed for the func­tion­ing of the Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty law.

In a 90-minute ad­dress, Im­bert de­tailed as­pects in­volved in the 10 seg­ments of the reg­u­la­tions.

In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Charisse Seep­er­sad asked about the pre­pared­ness of pub­lic bod­ies to han­dle the law, what’s be­ing done to en­sure their full com­pli­ance and when they will all be ful­ly com­pli­ant so the act can be im­ple­ment­ed.

Im­bert said the procur­ing en­ti­ties will have no choice but to be­come com­pli­ant, “We in­tend to pro­claim this act in March so they will just have to come up to speed.”

He said Gov­ern­ment had asked min­istries and en­ti­ties not to cre­ate ad­di­tion­al bod­ies to man­age their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties un­der this law. He ex­plained it was a typ­i­cal re­ac­tion to some­thing new for pub­lic bod­ies to say they have to cre­ate an en­tire pro­cure­ment unit to man­age the mat­ter “but we asked them to look with­in their ex­ist­ing es­tab­lish­ments and those peo­ple who can do the job, use them.”

“So we ex­pect when we pro­claim this law next month, every pub­lic en­ti­ty will just have to come on board and if not, there are se­ri­ous con­se­quences. We can’t wait for­ev­er, this has been in the sys­tem for a long time - this is the fi­nal stage, we’re on the fin­ish­ing line; and... we’re just go­ing ahead.”

Im­bert in­di­cat­ed a last-minute ap­proach is used by many—in­clud­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic re­cent­ly sub­mit­ting Prop­er­ty Val­u­a­tion Re­turn forms, “Every time we got to the sub­mis­sion dead­line the sys­tem crashed as thou­sands of peo­ple tried to get in­to the com­put­er sys­tem that day, they wait­ed ‘til the last day.”

“So the pub­lic en­ti­ties who wait un­til the last mo­ment will just have to com­ply…we need to get on with it I think every­one agrees we have to get the show on the road.”

Procla­ma­tion of the act will al­low ag­griev­ed sup­pli­ers and con­trac­tors to chal­lenge pro­cure­ment is­sues in court.

Im­bert not­ed for the last 20 years sup­pli­ers and con­trac­tors have tried un­suc­cess­ful­ly to per­suade the courts to re­view state en­ter­prise op­er­a­tions.

He cit­ed cas­es by Jusam­co, NH In­ter­na­tion­al and Span­crete Caribbean which failed. In those cas­es was the crit­i­cal el­e­ment of the non-ex­is­tence of statu­to­ry un­der­pin­ning for the pro­cure­ment process and for state en­ter­pris­es. But this will change when the Pro­cure­ment law is pro­claimed.

Im­bert said the lengthy, very so­phis­ti­cat­ed dis­pute res­o­lu­tion process in­volved un­der the new law “will hope­ful­ly avoid lit­i­ga­tion”.

That sets guide­lines for chal­lenges by ag­griev­ed sup­pli­ers and con­trac­tors.

Im­bert con­grat­u­lat­ed of­fi­cials in­volved in pro­duc­ing the leg­is­la­tion, in­clud­ing Min­is­ter in Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning who he said did a lot of the work. Once the Sen­ate ap­proves the reg­u­la­tions, he said on­ly sub­sidiary mat­ters will re­main for set­tle­ment. (GA)