It has tak­en 16 years and two po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tions but at long last, al­beit by a cir­cuitous leg­isla­tive route, the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, 2023, will be ful­ly en­act­ed next Wednes­day.

The an­nounce­ment of full procla­ma­tion of the long-await­ed law was not com­plete­ly un­ex­pect­ed. Ear­li­er this year, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley promised it would be done by East­er, so Thurs­day’s fi­nal Cab­i­net ap­proval wasn’t too far off that time­line.

Still, there have been so many stops and starts in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of this pro­cure­ment regime that at times, it seemed like the coun­try would nev­er be rid of the an­ti­quat­ed and in­ef­fi­cient Cen­tral Ten­ders Board (CTB) sys­tem.

With just a few days to go to com­plete the tran­si­tion to a mod­ern sys­tem for procur­ing goods and ser­vices in the pub­lic sec­tor, cit­i­zens will fi­nal­ly ben­e­fit from a regime that will de­liv­er ac­count­abil­i­ty, in­tegri­ty, trans­paren­cy and val­ue for mon­ey.

For many years, the op­po­site was true and bil­lions of tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars were of­ten mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed.

That is why it is so per­plex­ing that it took years of lob­by­ing be­fore law­mak­ers fi­nal­ly be­gan to work on pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion.

Many of the flaws of the for­mer CTB regime were doc­u­ment­ed in the Bal­lah Re­port, the re­sult of a re­view done by a Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed com­mit­tee in 1982.

But that sys­tem was still in place many years lat­er, when the 2010 Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the con­struc­tion sec­tor re­port stat­ed that the leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing the CTB was “uni­ver­sal­ly per­ceived as im­pos­ing un­nec­es­sary con­straints and bu­reau­cra­cy, lead­ing to de­lay and in­ef­fi­cien­cy.”

In Jan­u­ary 2015, while the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship was in pow­er, the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, 2015 (the Act,) was fi­nal­ly passed. How­ev­er, it was not pro­claimed in­to law.

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment then made three amend­ments to the leg­is­la­tion and be­gan a painful­ly slow process of pro­claim­ing it in parts. This was a time-con­sum­ing ex­er­cise be­cause the writ­ten reg­u­la­tions had to be sub­mit­ted to the Min­istry of Fi­nance for ap­proval be­fore be­ing laid and passed in Par­lia­ment.

At this stage, with all the time that has elapsed since pro­cure­ment laws were first draft­ed and laid in Par­lia­ment, nei­ther Gov­ern­ment nor the Op­po­si­tion should dare claim cred­it for fi­nal­ly bring­ing the coun­try’s pub­lic pro­cure­ment sys­tems in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry. Nei­ther par­ty can do so be­cause both fell short in de­liv­er­ing this long over­due sys­tem.

In­stead, as a mat­ter of pri­or­i­ty, ef­forts should be fo­cused on ap­point­ing a new Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor to re­place Mooni­lal Lalchan, whose term ex­pired in Jan­u­ary.

It is un­for­tu­nate that Mr Lalchan’s tenure end­ed be­fore he had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to func­tion in a ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed pro­cure­ment regime. How­ev­er, his work in set­ting up all the sys­tems and rais­ing aware­ness of the val­ue of mod­ern process­es for the pro­cure­ment of goods and ser­vices in the pub­lic sec­tor is deeply ap­pre­ci­at­ed.

The very nec­es­sary over­sight and con­trol func­tions car­ried out by the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion need to be guid­ed by a full-time Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor. This is a crit­i­cal ap­point­ment and there should be no de­lay in in­stalling a qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­al to con­tin­ue the work start­ed by Mr Lalchan.

Once and for all, it is time to shake off all ves­tiges of the 1961 Cen­tral Ten­ders Board Act.