PPP calls on Police to probe increase in unadvertised procurement contracts

PPP had also “illegally” raised tendering threshold - Cabinet documents indicate

Feb 09, 2019 | News

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There appears to be evidence that a recent decision by the Ministry of Finance to raise the thresholds under which ministries, agencies and state companies can authorize contracts, may have happened, too, under the previous administration.

According to documents seen by Kaieteur News, on November 11, 2014, one day after ex-president, Donald Ramotar, announced the proroguing of Parliament, his Cabinet took a decision to raise the threshold.

The argument by the People’s Progressive Party, which is in Opposition now, is that once Parliament is suspended, as is the case now, there should be no major decisions or signing of big deals until elections are held. But it appears a major one was taken then.

According to the documents, the then Minister of Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh, on January 7th, used the powers conferred to him via the Procurement Act, and “with the advice of the National Board”, to make the regulations…that is Procurement (Amendment) Regulations of 2015.
Those regulations stated that “Schedule 2 to the Principal Regulations is amended by the substitution in Paragraph 3 for the words “1,500,000” of the words “$5,000,000.”

According to the backup Cabinet Decision dated November 11, 2014, there was a proposal to increase the threshold for procurement through community-based participation and inclusion of Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDC).

The Cabinet then approved that the threshold, under community based method of procurement, be increased from $1.5M to $5M.

The Cabinet decision was signed by the then Secretary, Dr. Roger Luncheon.

This past week, it was learnt that according to a circular issued Monday, February 4, Deputy Chairman of NPTAB, Mark Bender disclosed that there are “New thresholds for Restrictive Tendering and Request for Quotations Methods of Procurement”.

The new changes will see the thresholds for goods and services at $10M, while the limits for contracts for construction will be $20M.

The Cabinet decision taken on November 11, 2014.

The threshold for Request for Quotations method of procurement is now $3M.

Previously, in contracts for goods and services, ministries and state agencies could have only internally approved up to $3M while the limit for construction contracts was $10M.

The limit for Requests For Quotations was $1.5M.

The circular was sent to Permanent Secretaries, Agencies, Corporation Heads and Regional Administrations… the new thresholds take immediate effect.

The idea is to reduce the bottlenecks that come with contracts that sometimes have to wait months to be awarded because the ministries and agencies don’t have authorization.

However, the Opposition was wary of the decision to raise the threshold.
According to Juan Edghill, a former Junior Finance Minister under the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), he has information that the Government has “illegally facilitated and created the architecture to corruptly award contracts to friends and family by way of arbitrarily amending the Public Procurement Act subsidiary legislation Chapter 73:05 (Regulations 9 of 2004).

“This action enables award of contract without public advertisement, by way of restricted tendering and subverts the use of qualifications for this procurement process to be confined to specialized services or procurement of highly-complex items as stated in 26 (1) (a) of the Procurement Act of 2003.”

Edghill said that in layman’s terms, the action has made it possible to give contracts to unqualified persons and companies for the procurement of Goods and Services and construction.

On Thursday, Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo, called on the Public Procurement Commission to investigate what he said was an illegal hike to the threshold…he probably was unaware that his party in Government had done the same.