Finance Minister Colm Imbert has stated that the just concluded 45th Caricom heads of government meeting cost taxpayers about $9 million or less.
Imbert, during a virtual media conference on Tuesday, dismissed reports that the cost of the summit was in the hundreds of millions.
He said the numbers he saw and heard in the public are wrong but from his vantage point the cost is in the region of $9 million or less.
Imbert also addressed the concerns raised by Opposition MP Saddam Hosein, concerning the exemption Imbert signed to allow for the procurement of goods and services outside of the legal framework of the Procurement Act for the summit.
The Finance Minister stood by earlier statements that he is not the procurer of goods and services with respect to that matter.
However, he said while the procurement legislation is good on paper, there have been issues in getting it implemented.
As an example of the issues faced in implementation of the procurement law, Imbert said so far only 861 suppliers have been pre-qualified, “7,789 suppliers are entered into the system but only 861 of these suppliers have pre-qualified for all or some of their lines of business”.
He said 1,086 suppliers are ending pre-qualification and 32,357 lines of business are pending pre-qualification.
“When you look at these numbers only 861 suppliers of goods and services to public bodies which is the whole of Government, the whole of the State enterprise sector, statutory authorities, Government departments, only 861 suppliers have pre-qualified so far,” he said.
Imbert said before the law was passed on April 26, there were “thousands, maybe 100,000 suppliers in Trinidad and Tobago”.
“This is brand new to a lot of people and many Government departments are experiencing extreme difficulty because their traditional suppliers have not gone through the process of pre-qualification and it is ironic that there was a clamour from the private sector, a clamour from industry, a clamour from the construction industry, from chambers of industry and commerce, and a demand that this legislation be enacted ‘as is where is don’t make a single change to it’ and we made some adjustments to try and make it more practical, we got criticised for that and now since April 26 the Act has been proclaimed but less than 1,000 persons have pre-qualified so it means that a whole group of people are now out of the system and can no longer provide goods and services,” Imbert said.
“And they have not pre-qualified for all sorts of reasons, one of the main being that in this procurement legislation which was there from day one when it was proposed over ten years ago, was that in order to supply goods and services to the Government you have to be fully paid up with your taxes and there are many, many suppliers who are not compliant with their taxes and their national insurance contributions and therefore are disqualified from providing goods and services to the Government and those are people who have been providing services for 20 to 30 years and basic things like water,” he said.
He said he expected a statement would be made since “the government has nothing to hide.”