By Staff Writer
Small local contractors are being shut out as larger firms scrape up small government-funded contracts. The issue was addressed earlier this week by President, Dr Irfaan Ali, who declared that firms bidding for and being awarded large projects that fall over $100M should not be bidding for small regional projects. He then asked that larger firms back off and allow small contractors to obtain those small projects. But asking is not enough and when it ultimately fails, what is the government prepared to do? This is the question that was posed by the former Finance Minister, Winston Jordan in a missive yesterday.
According to him, there is existing legislation that could solve the problem, but the government must enforce if it truly desires equality in the public procurement system and more importantly, the preservation of small contractors. He referred to 2019 when the former Coalition Government amended the Procurement Act to allow a portion of those works to go exclusively to small contractors. Those changes include the categorisation of contractors and their eligibility to bid exclusively for a particular category of work bearing a particular category or estimate scale.
The amendment also linked the Procurement Act with the Small Business Act, thus allowing small businesses easier and smoother access to public procurement.
Jordan also pointed to a deviation from the due diligence process, which is reportedly resulting in a lopsided state of affairs. He said that the coalition government made it mandatory that budget agencies clear their tender documents (with values above their Ministerial, Regional or Agency tender board thresholds) with the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) before they were released to the public for tendering. This practice by NPTAB allowed for checks and balances by ensuring, for example, that there was consistency in the documents and that the evaluation criteria were suitable for the type of procurement (works, goods and services).
He said that budget agencies were required to make the necessary corrections before the bid documents were approved. With NPTAB imprimatur of the bidding documents, bidders were assured both of the authenticity of the document and the process. However, according to him, this procedure no longer exists.
He said that NPTAB on September 24, 2020, removed the process of clearing tender documents prior to the launch of tender. This “critical” check and balance was instantly removed “with a stroke of the pen”, resulting in chaos and inequality, thereby forming the breeding ground for corruption, the former Minister lamented.
