Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (TTCA) Mikey Joseph says in the last ten to 15 years the coun­try has lost "a lot of mon­ey" be­cause of weak pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion.

"We have come a long way in hav­ing pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion...it's not ide­al­ly what we want but it's some­thing that is much bet­ter than what we had, and if im­ple­ment­ed, could save us a lot of mon­ey," he said

Not­ing that there has been procla­ma­tion and par­tial as­sent of some ar­eas of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al Prop­er­ty Act, 2015, Joseph called on Gov­ern­ment to move speed­i­ly to ap­point a pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor.

The TTCA pres­i­dent was one of four speak­ers at a post bud­get fo­rum host­ed by the De­part­ment of Eco­nom­ics, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, on Thurs­day evening. Oth­er speak­ers at the two-hour fo­rum chaired by eco­nom­ics lec­tur­er Dr Daren Con­rad at the Daa­ga Au­di­to­ri­um were se­nior lec­tur­er Dr Roger Ho­sein, lec­tur­er Dr An­tho­ny Birch­wood and di­rec­tor of tax at KP­MG Nicole Joseph.

Joseph said the most ef­fec­tive way to get an econ­o­my go­ing was to build and that build­ing de­mand­ed pro­fes­sion­als, man­u­fac­tur­ing, fi­nan­cial ser­vices and skilled and un­skilled labour.

"It is our view, though, that the Fi­nance Min­is­ter did not ful­ly em­brace the op­por­tu­ni­ties to send a stronger mes­sage to the na­tion of the need for us to be fru­gal in our fi­nan­cial af­fairs," he said.

Joseph said while the TTCA be­lieved Gov­ern­ment's sig­nal to con­tin­ue the San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin High­way was a good one, there is some de­gree of un­cer­tain­ty since the cur­rent con­trac­tor on the con­struc­tion firm OAS Con­stru­to­ra–is fac­ing bank­rupt­cy pro­ceed­ings in Brazil.

"There is some in­for­ma­tion that sug­gests some con­tin­gency mea­sures have been put in place to deal with this but it is go­ing to re­sult in a de­lay in cer­tain ar­eas of the high­way. We still re­main op­ti­mistic that this project is good for the fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try, so it is some­thing that we sup­port," he said.

He added that while some of projects an­nounced by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert seemed like a lot they were in con­cep­tu­al stages and most of them will not hap­pen. He list­ed some as the Curepe In­ter­change, Princes Town to Ma­yaro High­way and Va­len­cia to To­co up­grade.

"Those projects are prob­a­bly go­ing to be about three or four years down the line."