After 20 years… Parliament to approve Procurement Commission members today

Aug 03, 2016 News

Overlooked; Chartered Accountant Christopher Ram

The long awaited Public Procurement Commission (PPC) will finally be a reality. Five persons, including a Minister under the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), have been nominated for appointment.
The individuals who were shortlisted are Dr. Nanda Gopaul, a former Minister of Labour; Carol Corbin, wife of former Opposition Leader Robert Corbin; Sukrishnalall Pasha, who served as Chairman of the Small Business Bureau; Ivor B. English, former head of the Transport and Harbours Department; and Attorney-at-Law Emily Dodson.
They are the product of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC)’s deliberations, which culled a list of 12 applicants.
Longstanding anti-corruption advocates Anand Goolsarran and Christopher Ram were denied a place on the final shortlist.
Goolsarran is a former Auditor General with a wide financial background, while Ram is a former President of the Guyana Bar Association and a Chartered Accountant. Both assisted in carrying out some of the most damning forensic audits initiated by the current administration into state agencies and projects and were seen as front runners for the PPC.
Other applicants who did not make the shortlist were former Minister of Public Works Robeson Benn; Guyana Oil Company (GuyOil) Chairman Lance Carberry; Balwant Persaud; Devan Khemraj and Cecil Jacques.
Tomorrow’s sitting of the National Assembly will see PAC Chairman Irfaan Ali moving a motion to have the report on the nominees considered. Previously, he had announced that his committee was working towards a March deadline for the establishment of the much needed Commission. For years, accusations of corruption and fiscal irregularities have been bantered around.
Recently, the bid protest committee was set up. However, it is believed that the establishment of the Public Procurement Commission will address many of the concerns with the system. Pending its establishment, the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) had fulfilled some of its functions, as set out by the Procurement Act of 2003.
The Act states that upon PPC’s establishment, acts such as appointing a pool of evaluators and exercising jurisdiction over tenders “which exceed such an amount as prescribed by regulations” of the agency will stay with the NPTAB.
Other functions such as making regulations to govern procurement and determining the form of documents to be used in the process such as standard bidding and prequalification document will revert back to the PPC.
Some of the PPC’s most important functions will be making formal judgments in proceedings to debar contractors and making recommendations to improve the procurement system.
The PPC’s establishment comes after Guyana was ranked 119 out of 168 countries on the Transparency International (TI) Perceptions Index in the 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index.
The report showed that despite much talk by nations to fight corruption, countries, including Guyana, showed little sign of improvement.
Guyana received a score of 29, signaling a slip one place down from its score last year. But Guyana did improve in ranking. In 2014 it was ranked 124 out of 175 countries but in 2015 it moved up to 119 out of 168 countries.
The report said that any score below 50 indicates a serious corruption problem. Guyana has never been above 50. Additionally two-thirds of the countries surveyed scored less than 50.

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One thought on “After 20 years… Parliament to approve Procurement Commission members today”

BeFair_SeeClear August 3, 2016 at 2:45 pm

Another promise fulfilled by the APNU^AFC….just over one year ….why couldn’t the PPP get this done in 23 years?

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