TTTI: Procurement amendments weakening public spending safeguards

Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shar­lene.ram­per­[email protected]

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute (TT­TI) says re­cent leg­isla­tive amend­ments have weak­ened pub­lic pro­cure­ment safe­guards while leav­ing bil­lions of dol­lars in state spend­ing sub­ject to re­duced over­sight.

The state­ment comes weeks af­ter the Min­istry of Fi­nance’s pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2027 fis­cal pack­age, which projects to­tal pub­lic ex­pen­di­ture of $63.368 bil­lion against es­ti­mat­ed rev­enue of $59.729 bil­lion, leav­ing an an­tic­i­pat­ed fis­cal deficit of $3.639 bil­lion.

In its eval­u­a­tion of the fi­nan­cial pack­age, ti­tled Fol­low­ing Pub­lic Mon­ey from Plan to De­liv­ery, the an­ti-cor­rup­tion watch­dog stat­ed that the true val­ue of the fis­cal al­lo­ca­tion de­pends on pub­lic ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“The Trinidad and To­ba­go Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute (TT­TI) recog­nis­es that a bud­get is a plan, not a record of re­sults. Its val­ue to cit­i­zens de­pends on whether they can fol­low pub­lic mon­ey: how it is al­lo­cat­ed, how con­trac­tors are se­lect­ed and ap­point­ed, and what is ul­ti­mate­ly de­liv­ered,” the in­sti­tute said.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion high­light­ed the role of statu­to­ry over­sight in pub­lic con­tract­ing, say­ing, “Pub­lic pro­cure­ment is where pub­lic mon­ey meets pri­vate in­ter­ests.

“A ro­bust pro­cure­ment frame­work is the prin­ci­pal safe­guard that en­sures con­tracts are award­ed fair­ly and on mer­it, that the pub­lic re­ceives val­ue for mon­ey, and that in­de­pen­dent over­sight can iden­ti­fy prob­lems be­fore pub­lic mon­ey is com­mit­ted.”

The state­ment point­ed to 2026 leg­isla­tive amend­ments to the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act that ex­empt­ed en­er­gy, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships for pub­lic hous­ing and emer­gency pur­chas­es. The re­vi­sions al­so dou­bled the thresh­old for se­nior of­fi­cials’ pur­chas­es out­side nor­mal rules from $1 mil­lion to $2 mil­lion, while mak­ing Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) in­ves­tiga­tive rec­om­men­da­tions ad­vi­so­ry on­ly.

TT­TI said these leg­isla­tive changes “rep­re­sent a ma­te­r­i­al di­lu­tion of these safe­guards,” adding that, “tak­en to­geth­er, these changes shift the sys­tem away from pre­vent­ing prob­lems and to­wards dis­cov­er­ing them af­ter pub­lic mon­ey has been spent.”

Re­gard­ing Gov­ern­ment state­ments that pro­cure­ment rules were caus­ing project de­lays, TT­TI said dis­cre­tion and trans­paren­cy must in­crease si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

It al­so ques­tioned the $4 bil­lion al­lo­cat­ed to the 2027 De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme, not­ing that in fis­cal 2026, Par­lia­ment ap­proved $4.1 bil­lion for cap­i­tal works, but re­vised es­ti­mates in­di­cate spend­ing reached rough­ly $3 bil­lion, leav­ing about $1.25 bil­lion un­spent.

“Un­spent mon­ey is not nec­es­sar­i­ly lost, but it usu­al­ly means projects that cit­i­zens were ex­pect­ing have been de­layed, scaled back or not start­ed,” TT­TI said.

It cit­ed past cap­i­tal spend­ing util­i­sa­tion rates of 68.4 per cent in 2018 and 67.9 per cent in 2021.

It al­so not­ed Gov­ern­ment’s pro­ject­ed rise of prop­er­ty in­come from $8.5 bil­lion to $12.7 bil­lion, with state en­ter­prise pay­ments jump­ing from $1.9 bil­lion to $4.4 bil­lion.

It said of­fi­cial bud­get es­ti­mates do not iden­ti­fy which en­ter­pris­es are ex­pect­ed to con­tribute or the fi­nan­cial ba­sis for those tar­gets.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing in­creased bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions for the OPR from $40 mil­lion to $50 mil­lion and the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment from $39.8 mil­lion to $56.6 mil­lion, the in­sti­tute said ad­di­tion­al fund­ing can­not re­place statu­to­ry en­force­ment au­thor­i­ty.

To en­sure pub­lic ac­count­abil­i­ty keeps pace with spend­ing, the in­sti­tute urged the Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment key trans­paren­cy mea­sures. These in­clude pub­lish­ing all con­tract awards with­in 30 days, de­tail­ing the sup­pli­er, val­ue, pro­cure­ment method, and se­lec­tion ba­sis across both stan­dard and ex­empt­ed pur­chas­es, along­side full dis­clo­sure of es­ti­mat­ed and ac­tu­al ex­pen­di­ture un­der the new le­gal ex­emp­tions.

TT­TI al­so called on the Min­istry of Fi­nance to re­lease the un­der­ly­ing re­view in­to Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) de­lays so cit­i­zens can as­sess project bot­tle­necks.

To eval­u­ate the im­pact of re­cent leg­isla­tive changes, the in­sti­tute re­quest­ed a 12-month joint as­sess­ment of the pro­cure­ment amend­ments, con­duct­ed with the OPR and civ­il so­ci­ety, to re­store any weak­ened safe­guards.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the watch­dog urged the com­ple­tion and launch of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s In­vest­mentMap plat­form, sup­port­ed by quar­ter­ly progress re­ports on ma­jor in­fra­struc­ture projects, and re­quest­ed a clear break­down of pro­ject­ed state en­ter­prise rev­enues de­tail­ing in­di­vid­ual en­ti­ty tar­gets and their fi­nan­cial ba­sis.

Con­clud­ing its eval­u­a­tion, TT­TI said, “Cit­i­zens are en­ti­tled to know how pub­lic funds are com­mit­ted, who ben­e­fits, and what is de­liv­ered. Ac­count­abil­i­ty must keep pace with spend­ing.”