An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers
@guardian.co.tt

Busi­ness groups have backed ef­forts to over­haul Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pub­lic pro­cure­ment sys­tem, but are warn­ing that greater speed and flex­i­bil­i­ty can­not come at the ex­pense of trans­paren­cy, com­pe­ti­tion and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

The Gov­ern­ment has in­tro­duced the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026, with de­bate in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives set to start to­day.

The pro­posed changes would sig­nif­i­cant­ly al­ter the pow­ers of the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) af­ter a com­plaint is made or an in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­gins.

Un­der the amend­ments, the OPR would no longer have the pow­er to halt or de­lay a pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise, pre­vent a pub­lic body from con­tin­u­ing with a process, or­der a pro­cure­ment de­ci­sion to be re­vis­it­ed, re­quire a fresh eval­u­a­tion, bring a pro­cure­ment process to an end or in­ter­vene in the award or ex­e­cu­tion of a con­tract.

Two busi­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tives told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the pro­posed changes must be con­sid­ered against the Gov­ern­ment’s push to ac­cel­er­ate ma­jor projects and bring more pri­vate-sec­tor cap­i­tal in­to de­vel­op­ment.

The Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC) said Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pro­cure­ment sys­tem needs to keep pace with the way ma­jor projects are now be­ing fi­nanced and de­liv­ered.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion said Gov­ern­ment’s in­creas­ing use of pub­lic pri­vate part­ner­ships and pri­vate cap­i­tal means pro­cure­ment rules must al­low ma­jor projects to be prop­er­ly struc­tured and de­signed to at­tract in­vestors, fi­nanciers and tech­ni­cal part­ners.

CR­BC said re­form could al­so re­duce the bur­den on small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (SMEs), by cut­ting un­nec­es­sary ad­min­is­tra­tive and bid­ding costs and cre­at­ing clear­er av­enues for qual­i­fied lo­cal com­pa­nies to par­tic­i­pate in the sup­ply chains of ma­jor projects.

But it warned that flex­i­bil­i­ty must come with safe­guards.

CR­BC said changes in­volv­ing ap­proval thresh­olds, ex­emp­tions, chal­lenge pe­ri­ods and the OPR’s role must con­tin­ue to pro­tect trans­paren­cy, fair com­pe­ti­tion, ac­count­abil­i­ty and val­ue for mon­ey.

It said any in­crease in thresh­olds or in­tro­duc­tion of faster pro­cure­ment routes should still re­quire prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion, au­dit trails and enough trans­paren­cy to give busi­ness­es con­fi­dence that con­tracts are be­ing ac­cessed fair­ly.

The is­sue be­comes more im­por­tant as the Gov­ern­ment seeks to at­tract pri­vate cap­i­tal and ex­pand pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships, CR­BC said.

It said in­vestors need a pro­cure­ment sys­tem that is pre­dictable and cred­i­ble, while lo­cal busi­ness­es need as­sur­ance that they will have a fair op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­pete.

CR­BC said pro­cure­ment re­form should mod­ernise the sys­tem rather than weak­en it, with the ob­jec­tive of mak­ing it faster and more prac­ti­cal while re­tain­ing checks and bal­ances to pro­tect tax­pay­ers, en­cour­age com­pe­ti­tion, at­tract in­vest­ment and cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal busi­ness­es.

Abrahim Ali, pres­i­dent of the San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion, said the OPR frame­work was cre­at­ed to guard against per­ceived cor­rup­tion in the award­ing of ma­jor con­tracts, but the pro­cure­ment process al­so has to ac­com­mo­date the need to move projects more quick­ly.

Ali point­ed specif­i­cal­ly to large hous­ing de­vel­op­ments, where de­sign-and-build con­tracts can in­volve lengthy ten­der­ing pro­ce­dures.

He said the ex­ist­ing OPR process had not al­ways al­lowed projects to move for­ward as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

Ali said there were on­ly a small num­ber of con­trac­tors in Trinidad and To­ba­go with the fi­nan­cial ca­pac­i­ty to fund ma­jor projects and wait for re­pay­ment from the pub­lic.

He said this was par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant to Gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed hous­ing, where peo­ple have been wait­ing for long pe­ri­ods for homes.

“The faster the hous­es are built, the bet­ter for the peo­ple,” Ali said.

But Ali al­so raised con­cerns about the qual­i­ty of con­struc­tion and the abil­i­ty of con­trac­tors to cor­rect prob­lems when projects fail.

He said the coun­try had ex­pe­ri­enced cas­es in the past where hous­es were poor­ly con­struct­ed and con­trac­tors did not have the re­sources to re­build or cor­rect failed projects.

Ali said the pro­cure­ment changes, there­fore, need to in­clude mech­a­nisms that iden­ti­fy prob­lems ear­ly dur­ing con­struc­tion rather than af­ter projects have been com­plet­ed.

“We, how­ev­er, need to un­der­stand that all these in­vest­ments need to have a built-in sys­tem in be­com­ing aware at an ear­ly stage of con­struc­tion,” he said.

Ali said the pro­posed changes to the OPR leg­is­la­tion must be care­ful­ly de­signed and im­ple­ment­ed to pro­tect cit­i­zens while al­low­ing the Gov­ern­ment to move more quick­ly on ma­jor projects.