Transparency Institute warns procurement bill weakens oversight

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute (TT­TI) is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to pause pas­sage of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026, ar­gu­ing that the pro­posed changes would widen ex­emp­tions and weak­en in­de­pen­dent over­sight.

TT­TI said the Bill would ex­empt pro­cure­ment in­volv­ing en­er­gy, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and pub­lic hous­ing de­vel­oped through pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships from the Act, with­out spend­ing lim­its or an emer­gency re­quire­ment. It al­so said the Bill would broad­en the de­f­i­n­i­tion of emer­gen­cies to in­clude risks to busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity.

The in­sti­tute said the Bill would re­move the re­quire­ment for min­is­te­r­i­al ex­emp­tions to have the rec­om­men­da­tion or agree­ment of the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR).