Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has tak­en a step to­wards mod­ernising its fi­nan­cial frame­work in line with the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Act af­ter 30 years in abeyance.

At a ple­nary sit­ting on Tues­day, Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance Petal-Ann Roberts said the THA is seek­ing to end three decades of le­gal am­bi­gu­i­ty, ad­min­is­tra­tive fric­tion and weak in­sti­tu­tion­al fi­nan­cial over­sight. The mo­tion to Mod­ernise the THA Fi­nan­cial Rules 1989, de­scribed by Roberts as "a fun­da­men­tal up­grade", was passed unan­i­mous­ly by the House.

The sit­ting came one day af­ter Par­lia­ment passed the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Amend­ment Bill, which ex­pands the State's spend­ing abil­i­ty out­side nor­mal pro­cure­ment rules.

In her con­tri­bu­tion, Roberts ex­plained that the THA's op­er­a­tions have been neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed by the out­dat­ed 1990 Fi­nan­cial Rules.

She said that with the pas­sage of Act 40 of 1996, the THA was grant­ed en­hanced au­tonomous pow­ers. The THA Act al­lowed the As­sem­bly, with­in two months of its procla­ma­tion, the pow­ers to make fi­nan­cial rules, which would then be laid in Par­lia­ment.

How­ev­er, Roberts said the THA twice (in 1997 and 2003) draft­ed up­dat­ed fi­nan­cial rules, but these were nev­er brought to Par­lia­ment.

She said Sec­tion 71 (8) of the THA Act al­lowed the As­sem­bly a tran­si­tion­al safe­guard to utilise the 1990 frame­work un­til mod­i­fi­ca­tions take place.

Sec­tion 78, she said, pre­served the 1990 rules as a le­gal bridge, but it re­quired the 1990 rules to ap­ply with mod­i­fi­ca­tions for con­for­mi­ty with the 1996 leg­is­la­tion.

The ab­sence of cod­i­fied mod­i­fi­ca­tions, Roberts said, left it to ad­min­is­tra­tors, au­di­tors and of­fi­cials to in­ter­pret.

"The re­sult was pre­dictable. Dif­fer­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tions across di­vi­sions re­gard­ing the spend­ing au­thor­i­ties and ap­proval lim­its."

She said her di­vi­sion was man­dat­ed by Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine to mod­ernise the rules. A task force was es­tab­lished in March to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion and it sub­mit­ted a re­port on May 25, which was ap­proved by the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil.

Roberts said the mod­i­fied rules es­tab­lished struc­tur­al pil­lars: the re-an­chor­ing of the As­sem­bly Fund with clear gov­er­nance over the re­ceipt, cus­tody and dis­burse­ment of funds; statu­to­ry role clar­i­fi­ca­tion; align­ment of the rules to the mod­ern pro­cure­ment frame­work; and the digi­ti­sa­tion of op­er­a­tions and in­te­gra­tion of tech­nol­o­gy to pro­vide dig­i­tal trails on op­er­a­tions.

Roberts said Sec­tion 28 of the THA Act ref­er­enced the old Cen­tral Ten­ders Board Act, but with the pas­sage of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, this was su­per­seded.

"These mod­i­fied rules ful­ly in­te­grate the statu­to­ry oblig­a­tions of the pub­lic pro­cure­ment re­form, en­sur­ing that every dol­lar spent by the As­sem­bly meets strict stan­dards of val­ue for mon­ey, trans­paren­cy and eq­ui­ty."

Le­gal Af­fairs Sec­re­tary Adan­na Joseph-Wal­lace en­dorsed the mod­i­fied fi­nan­cial rules, not­ing it erad­i­cates ar­bi­trary dis­cre­tion through statu­to­ry war­rants is­sued by the Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance. She said funds can­not move from the cen­tral THA fund ac­count to spend­ing di­vi­sions with­out a war­rant signed by the sec­re­tary. These war­rants would ex­pire at the end of the fis­cal year.

Wal­lace said the up­dat­ed rules en­hance over­sight through statu­to­ry dis­clo­sure, mak­ing it manda­to­ry for emer­gency spend­ing to be pub­li­cised.

"A pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion un­der­took emer­gency road works lead­ing up to an elec­tion. Road­works this ad­min­is­tra­tion is still grap­pling to pay for.

"Un­der the pro­posed rules, where the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil ex­er­cis­es emer­gency pow­ers to draw from the con­tin­gency fund, the Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance is legal­ly re­quired to present a re­port of that with­draw­al to this House at the very next sit­ting," Joseph-Wal­lace said.

She said this mea­sure pre­vents ex­ec­u­tive over­reach and al­lows im­me­di­ate scruti­ny.