AM­CHAM T&T, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute are ex­treme­ly con­cerned that the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act has not been ful­ly pro­claimed and im­ple­ment­ed.

In a joint me­dia re­lease sent yes­ter­day, the busi­ness cham­bers said they are heart­ened that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al re­cent­ly recom­mit­ted the Gov­ern­ment to its im­ple­men­ta­tion.

The groups al­so quot­ed the AG as say­ing, “The Gov­ern­ment has placed its high­est pri­or­i­ty and is ful­ly com­mit­ted to take the fi­nal steps to ful­ly pro­claim and to bring in­to op­er­a­tion this im­por­tant law.”

They said, how­ev­er, they are “ut­ter­ly dis­ap­point­ed that the lack of “readi­ness” of state en­ter­pris­es, over which the Gov­ern­ment has ul­ti­mate con­trol, may fur­ther de­lay the full im­ple­men­ta­tion of the act.”

The cham­bers said this is­sue must be ad­dressed as a mat­ter of pri­or­i­ty to en­sure it is not a lim­i­ta­tion in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the act.

They then called on the Gov­ern­ment to give a def­i­nite time­line for the act’s im­ple­men­ta­tion and com­mit the nec­es­sary time and re­sources to en­sure this is met.

They said, “Hav­ing been ac­tive par­tic­i­pants in this process for the past decade in col­lab­o­ra­tion with sev­er­al oth­er groups un­der the ban­ner of the Pri­vate Sec­tor Civ­il So­ci­ety Or­gan­i­sa­tion, we sup­port the view of the JCC that the full im­ple­men­ta­tion of the act is pos­si­ble be­fore the read­ing of the 2023 na­tion­al bud­get.”

The re­lease added that the full im­ple­men­ta­tion of this act is a step to­ward strength­en­ing the rule of law in Trinidad and To­ba­go and in­creas­ing in­vestor con­fi­dence.

The busi­ness groups said it will al­so demon­strate the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in the util­i­sa­tion of pub­lic re­sources.