After doling out billions in contracts without oversight

Jan 31, 2022 News

– Govt. now promising rigid ranking system for bidders this year

Kaieteur News – Against the background of awarding a slew of mega contracts last year- some to contractors with no track record of building public projects, the PPP/C Government has said it is committed to strengthening the public procurement system here, promising training and capacity building at all levels of the process.
The administration said too that the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB), which it has stacked with a slew of government cronies and sympathisers, will commence the delivery of ministerial and regional training modules, both virtual and face-to-face, before the end of the first quarter of this year.

Minister with Responsibility for Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh

Last year, the administration awarded contracts for the construction of the new Demerara River Bridge at a cost of $53.7B and the Amaila Falls Hydropower Project at a time when there was no Public Procurement Commission in place. The contractors are all Chinese. Before those projects, billions were handed out in other civil works contracts to government sympathisers – the most notorious being the $346M given to the owners of Hits and Jams and Kashif and Shanghai to build a school at Bamia, Region 10.
The contractors themselves released a statement saying that despite having no experience in the field of construction, they are qualified in managing money. “…to be quite frank, we have been managing projects in the billions for a very long time…you know about Jam Zone, you know about Guyana Carnival, Kashif and Shanghai tournament.
These are really big hospitality/tourism projects,” one of the principals of Hits and Jams Rawle Ferguson posited. He cited as example “carnival would have brought about 50,000 people the last time and you did that by $1000 per person. You will get like $10 billion dollars and you do VAT from that you will get $1.4 billion. So we have been making money not just for our citizens, but for our government for quite some time in our country.”
During his budget speech last Wednesday Dr. Ashni Singh, Minister with responsibility for finance said the PPP/C Government is committed to restoring a public procurement system that was systematically dismantled by the APNU/AFC. “Indeed, since we resumed office in 2020, our Government has worked tirelessly to restore credibility, confidence, accountability, and transparency in public procurement,” Singh said.
He noted that the administration remodeled, modernised, and created a more user-friendly website for the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB). Uploaded the records of all tender openings and all contracts awarded at the NPTAB level. Instituted a public virtual tender opening process twice weekly, whereby bidders are provided visual, voice and text communication at the opening process, from the comfort of their offices.
Revised, updated, and issued new standard bidding documents for goods, works and services, including security services. Completed the design and development of the bidders register and expect to roll out its implementation in the first quarter of 2022. Compiled a comprehensive training manual for procuring entities, including ministerial and regional entities. Remodeled the three (3) person independent evaluation committees, whereby the composition of that committee is drawn from persons and sectors other than from the procuring entity.
This, Singh said was aimed at correcting fundamental checks and balances and control inadequacies that were prevalent under the previous administration, where the chairpersons of the evaluation committees were the same person that chaired the ministerial or regional tender’s board. “But most importantly, our NPTAB meets twice weekly, at which the business of the Board is captured, in structured minutes for each board meeting, and is kept for future examination as is necessary. This is in contrast with the ad hoc arrangements under the previous APNU/AFC government.”
Singh said going forward into 2022, our Government intends to continue to adhere to the stringent principles of transparency and good governance in public procurement. “In 2022, we will further strengthen the public procurement process through training and capacity building at all levels of the procurement process, national, ministerial, and regional. NPTAB personnel will also be provided with focused training, which will be extended to key officials, Ministries and Regions who manage programmes and projects. NPTAB will commence the delivery of ministerial and regional training modules both virtual and face-to-face before the end of the first quarter of this year.”
He spoke of the operationalisation of the bidders register within the first quarter of 2022 and will design an open and transparent system to rank and classify contractors by capacity and make provisions for electronic evaluations and payments to contractors. Further, Singh said the NPTAB will commence work to digitise its records in its effort to move to a fully electronic system in preparation for the launch of an E-Procure platform by 2024. Finally, action has already been taken with a view to seeking Parliamentary approval for the appointment of the members of the Public Procurement Commission.
Just last week this newspaper reported that Guyana, during the year 2021, dropped two points on the Transparency International Corruption Index, meaning that corruption in the country’s public sector has climbed, after a full year under the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Government. When the PPP/C demitted office, back in 2015, the country was scoring below 30 points.
During the years of the APNU+AFC that score steadily improved to 41. However, in the latest ranking, which was published last week Tuesday by Transparency International, a global coalition against corruption, Guyana’s performance dropped from 41 in 2020 to 39 in 2021. The Corruption Perception Index (CPI) is the most widely used corruption ranking in the World, according to the organisation’s website, which also explains that the data recorded in each country, measures how corrupt that country’s public sector is perceived. A country’s score is measured on a scale of 0-100, where 0 means highly corrupt and 100 means very clean. When the Coalition Party assumed office in 2015, Guyana’s score stood at 29. The following year, it progressed to 34, and in 2017, it jumped to 38. In 2018, Guyana dropped a point but in 2019, it again increased to 40 and finally, 41 in 2020.