Last Thurs­day, in this space un­der the head­line, “Who will ben­e­fit from the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion projects?” ques­tions were raised about the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s use of a se­lec­tive, com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment method to choose con­trac­tors for ma­jor hous­ing projects in Trinidad:

* These projects are Al­lam­by res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ment in Corinth, San Fer­nan­do, for which the coun­try’s newest, spe­cial pur­pose state en­ter­prise, Land­mark TT, award­ed a $129.83 mil­lion con­tract on April 17 to Mooti­lal Ramhit & Sons Con­tract­ing to con­struct 100 sin­gle-fam­i­ly homes and du­plex­es us­ing the de­sign-build-fi­nance mod­el. Sim­ple di­vi­sion would in­di­cate that the price per hous­ing unit is over $1 mil­lion, for un­sub­sidised homes tar­get­ed at mid­dle and up­per-in­come fam­i­lies;

* Mooti­lal Ramhit & Sons Con­tract­ing was al­so se­lect­ed for a $1 bil­lion con­tract from the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion in April 2026. That award by the HDC was part of a $3.4 bil­lion pack­age dis­trib­uted among 11 con­trac­tors for de­sign-build-fi­nance hous­ing ser­vices. One imag­ines that the Gov­ern­ment’s goal is for $3.4 bil­lion to al­low con­trac­tors to con­struct more than 3,000 homes.

The Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion is con­duct­ing en­quiries in­to the award of con­tracts by both Land­mark TT and HDC.

In a news re­lease on April 16, pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor Bev­er­ly Khan stat­ed. “The Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR), on Tues­day, April 14, 2026, for­mal­ly di­rect­ed the HDC to hold on the award of TT$3.4 bil­lion in hous­ing con­tracts pend­ing a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of the record of pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings. This en­quiry was ini­ti­at­ed to en­sure full com­pli­ance with the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, 2015, as amend­ed, its as­so­ci­at­ed reg­u­la­tions, hand­books and guide­lines, pur­suant to the Of­fice’s pow­ers un­der sec­tions 14(1)(a),(c) and (d) of the Act. The Of­fice will make no fur­ther com­ment on this mat­ter to en­sure the in­tegri­ty of its on­go­ing en­quiry process.”

The Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, 2015, at 14(1)(a),(c) and (d) state:

14. (1) In the per­for­mance of its func­tions, the Of­fice may—

(a) mon­i­tor the pro­cure­ment of goods, works and ser­vices, and the dis­pos­al of pub­lic prop­er­ty, by pub­lic bod­ies to en­sure com­pli­ance with this Act;

(b) con­duct au­dits and pe­ri­od­ic in­spec­tions of pub­lic bod­ies to en­sure com­pli­ance with this Act;

(c) is­sue di­rec­tions to pub­lic bod­ies to en­sure com­pli­ance with this Act; and

(d) car­ry out such oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties and do such oth­er acts as it con­sid­ers nec­es­sary or ex­pe­di­ent for the car­ry­ing out its func­tions.

It is in­ter­est­ing that Ms Khan re­ferred to 14(1) a, c and d, but not to b, which al­lows the OPR to con­duct au­dits and pe­ri­od­ic in­spec­tions of pub­lic bod­ies to en­sure com­pli­ance with this Act.

An au­dit or in­spec­tion of Land­mark TT would be in­for­ma­tive, I be­lieve, to find out what was the process by which that spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­ny se­lect­ed Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons, and which of Land­mark TT’s em­ploy­ees served as the pro­cure­ment of­fi­cer for its first hous­ing con­tract.

That ques­tion is im­por­tant be­cause sec­tion 61 (2) of Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, out­lines, “(2) For the pur­pose of this Act, a pub­lic body shall have a pro­cure­ment of­fi­cer who shall be re­spon­si­ble for pub­lic pro­cure­ment and the dis­pos­al of pub­lic prop­er­ty for that body and shall no­ti­fy the Of­fice, in writ­ing, of the name and des­ig­na­tion of its pro­cure­ment of­fi­cer.”

In Jan­u­ary 2026, Cab­i­net fur­ther agreed that a new state en­ter­prise, Land­mark TT Prop­er­ties Ltd would be in­cor­po­rat­ed as a state en­ter­prise re­spon­si­ble for the PPP be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the de­vel­op­ers.

If Land­mark TT made its first hous­ing con­tract award in April 2026, with­out an of­fi­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed pro­cure­ment of­fi­cer and with­out no­ti­fy­ing the OPR, in writ­ing, of the name and des­ig­na­tion of the pro­cure­ment of­fi­cer, then the state en­ter­prise would be in breach of the Act.

Ms Khan’s de­ci­sion

As I ar­gued last week, it seems clear to me that in the lo­cal pro­cure­ment law, the de­fault pref­er­ence is for a pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion process and open bid­ding, un­less the state body can prove that an­oth­er se­lec­tion process is more ap­pro­pri­ate.

T&T’s pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tions state, at 5 (1), “With­out lim­i­ta­tion to reg­u­la­tion 29, a pub­lic body shall utilise open bid­ding, un­less the com­plex­i­ty of the pro­cure­ment or mar­ket con­di­tions ren­ders an­oth­er method more ap­pro­pri­ate for achiev­ing the best val­ue for mon­ey.

At 5 (2), the pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tions add, “(2) Open bid­ding may be pre­ced­ed by a pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion or pre-se­lec­tion process set out in the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Pre-Qual­i­fi­ca­tion and Pre-Se­lec­tion) Reg­u­la­tions, 2021. These pro­ce­dures are ap­pro­pri­ate for large-scale, tech­ni­cal­ly com­plex and high-val­ue projects for goods, works or non-con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices.”

If the OPR al­lows the Gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue choos­ing con­trac­tors based on se­lec­tive, com­pet­i­tive ten­der­ing, then builders who are friends and fi­nanciers of the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion will con­tin­ue to re­ceive all of the jobs of­fered by state en­ter­pris­es, which is sim­i­lar to what hap­pened un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

In an ide­al world, the pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tor’s de­ter­mi­na­tion of the mat­ter in­volv­ing the $3.4 bil­lion in HDC con­tracts would be that the cor­po­ra­tion restart the en­tire process, en­sure that the Re­quest for Prop­sals is pub­lished in both news­pa­pers for sev­er­al days and that there is a pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion pe­ri­od and open bid­ding.

If the pro­cure­ment process for state hous­ing is be­yond re­proach, that would en­sure the best con­trac­tor is al­ways cho­sen, even if that builder has not made do­na­tions to the par­ty in pow­er.

If the process is be­yond re­proach, the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s am­bi­tious con­struc­tion plans for the next 10 years would not get de­railed by end­less le­gal chal­lenges.

Emi­rates call­ing?

And on the is­sue of the Gov­ern­ment’s am­bi­tious con­struc­tion plans for the next decade, it is use­ful to note that T&T Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print was of­fi­cial­ly launched on No­vem­ber 6, 2025. Lat­er that month, Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John led a high-lev­el min­is­te­r­i­al del­e­ga­tion to the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (UAE). The oth­er mem­bers of that del­e­ga­tion were Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, Sean Sobers, and Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein.

In the vis­it to the UAE, the T&T min­is­ters met Noura bint Mo­hammed Al Kaabi, Min­is­ter of State at the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs of the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates and “dis­cussed sev­er­al ar­eas of bi­lat­er­al im­por­tance in­clud­ing the pos­si­ble es­tab­lish­ment of a diplo­mat­ic mis­sion in the UAE as well as ar­eas for in­vest­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go which are aligned to the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print ‘Trinidad and To­ba­go Glob­al Lo­gis­ti­cal Hub’ Ini­tia­tive.”

In a news re­lease, the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs al­so not­ed that the T&T min­is­ters were due to meet “sev­er­al pri­vate sec­tor con­glom­er­ates in­clud­ing AD Ports Group; Roy­al Group Head­quar­ters; DP World; and the Dubai Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce.”

Is it ap­pro­pri­ate for T&T min­is­ters to meet rep­re­sen­ta­tives of for­eign com­pa­nies in their home coun­tries as part of an at­tempt to en­cour­age in­vest­ment in the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion projects?

Do those meet­ings give the UAE con­glom­er­ates an ad­van­tage over com­pa­nies from oth­er coun­tries?

What do we make of the fact that a re­turn mis­sion from the UAE vis­it­ed T&T from Jan­u­ary 23 to Jan­u­ary 26, 2026 and that the Emi­rati del­e­ga­tion was led by Noura bint Mo­hammed Al Kaabi, who met the Trinida­di­an team in No­vem­ber. The Emi­ratis toured ma­jor in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial in­vest­ment pos­si­bil­i­ties, in­clud­ing In­vaders Bay, the Port of Point Lisas and the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal.

Are those meet­ings a le­git­i­mate at­tempt by the T&T gov­ern­ment to whip up in­ter­est in the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print?

And will the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion use se­lec­tive or open bid­ding in choos­ing con­trac­tors for the Blue­print projects?