“Before we reduce the authority of a watchdog, perhaps we should first examine what happened when the watchdog barked.”
Earlier this year, the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) proposed awarding approximately $3.4 billion in Design-Build-Finance contracts to 11 contractors for the construction of public housing. The Office of Procurement Regulation intervened and directed the HDC to suspend the proposed awards while it reviewed the procurement process. The HDC subsequently cancelled the exercise before the contracts were entered into.
That sequence deserves far more public attention than it has received, particularly now that the Senate is considering significant amendments to the legislation governing public procurement. Parliament created an independent regulator and gave it powers to scrutinise the expenditure of public money.
A procurement exercise involving billions of dollars was initiated, the regulator intervened, and the process stopped.
That is precisely the kind of event that allows us to measure whether regulation has value.
Before reducing any of those regulatory powers, Parliament and the public should want to know exactly what happened. Why did the OPR consider intervention necessary?
What concerns arose during its examination? What weaknesses, if any, were identified? Why was the procurement ultimately cancelled? Most importantly, what might have happened had an independent regulator not possessed the authority to intervene?
These are not academic questions. They go directly to the purpose of procurement regulation.
The proposed amendments would expand categories of expenditure outside the ordinary procurement framework, including certain public-private partnerships for public housing.
They would also restrict remedies presently available to the OPR following complaints or investigations and shorten the standstill period before contracts can proceed.
Government has argued that the existing procurement regime can impede implementation and that reform is necessary to accelerate development.
There is undoubtedly room to examine whether procedures can be simplified, timelines shortened and unnecessary administrative burdens removed. But efficiency cannot be measured solely by how quickly a contract is awarded.
A procurement system must also measure whether the State obtained competitive prices, whether bidders were treated fairly, whether appropriate due diligence occurred and whether taxpayers received value for money. A contract awarded quickly but badly is not efficient.
Our recent procurement history reinforces that point. The OPR’s first annual report disclosed approximately $5 billion in contracts awarded through methods other than fully competitive procurement. The regulator expressed concern about what it described as excessive use of limited and non-competitive methods, including frequent use of single and sole-source procurement.
That should have triggered an important national discussion. Why are so many public contracts avoiding fully competitive processes? Are the reasons justified? Are taxpayers consistently receiving the best available value?
What improvements are required? Instead, we are now debating legislation that could reduce the reach of the very institution asking those questions.
Independent regulators are created because governments cannot reasonably be expected to provide the only assurance that their own procurement decisions are satisfactory.
Oversight provides a second pair of eyes, independent of the institution spending the money. That independence has value precisely when it creates discomfort.
The OPR should not exist merely to collect information after money has been spent. Its importance lies in its capacity to identify problems early enough for corrective action to matter.
That brings us back to the $3.4 billion HDC exercise.
I am not suggesting that the OPR’s intervention establishes corruption or wrongdoing, such a conclusion should not be drawn without evidence.
But intervention on that scale surely establishes something else: the public has a legitimate interest in knowing what the regulator found.
The OPR should therefore publish, to the fullest extent permitted by law, the findings arising from its examination of that procurement exercise.
Citizens should know what caused concern, what deficiencies were identified, what recommendations were made and what lessons should guide future procurement.
That disclosure would also improve the present debate.
Instead of discussing procurement reform primarily in theoretical terms, Parliament could examine an actual multibillion-dollar case and ask a practical question: under the proposed amended legislation, would the regulator have possessed the same ability to intervene?
If the answer is yes, Government should demonstrate how. If the answer is no, Government should explain why reducing that protection is in the public interest.
Trinidad and Tobago spent years debating procurement reform because weaknesses in the expenditure of public money were widely recognised. Legislation was developed, amended, debated and eventually brought fully into operation in 2023. Three years is hardly sufficient time to conclude that the experiment has failed.
Indeed, the evidence may be pointing in the opposite direction. A regulator examining billions of dollars in non-competitive procurement and intervening in a $3.4 billion exercise may be evidence that the institution is beginning to perform precisely the function for which it was created.
By all means, improve the system where experience demonstrates that improvement is necessary.
But before removing powers or protections, examine the evidence produced by the system we already have.
Because after the next billion-dollar procurement is announced, it may be too late to wonder whether we weakened the institution that might have asked the difficult questions.
Before we change the watchdog, Trinidad and Tobago deserves to know what happened when it barked.
Robert Le Hunte is a former executive director of Republic Bank Ltd and the Inter-American Development Bank and former managing director of ANSA Bank Ltd. He is currently engaged in financial and policy-related consultancy across the Caribbean and Africa.
