LESS than three months after the Procurement Act was passed, Finance Minister Colm Imbert said there is a need to amend the legislation which took eight years to enact.

Speaking at a virtual media conference on Tuesday, Imbert said the law, as is, does not allow for unforeseen circumstances and there is a need to address this through amendments.

The minister called the media conference in response to Opposition MP Saddam Hosein labelling his (Imbert) exemption for the procurement of goods and services for the recent 45th Caricom summit, as illegal.

He stressed that the decision was not unilaterally made as Cabinet would have discussed it and Attorney General Reginald Armour, SC, would have advised him on it.

“One does not rush to make amendments to legislation as controversial as this one. One has to get proper advice on what the reaction would be. It will be a knee-jerk reaction to have an emergency session of Parliament to simply deal with procurement for a foreign affairs event,” Imbert said, when asked why the exemption was not brought to the parliament.

“What is needed instead, is a properly thought out, properly advised, well-drafted amendment that would allow government to take action for unforeseen events to provide immediate action and then come back to the parliament for ratification.”

Imbert said that the law had some constraints which are not “fully understood” and that was one of the reasons why amendments are needed.

MINISTER WANTS 2 AMENDMENTS

He added that it is the plan of the Government to return to Parliament in the second half of this parliamentary year to make various amendments to the act. He suggested two amendments be made; to allow government to act in unforeseen circumstances and to have a minimal threshold similar to what accounting officers have to allow for the purchasing of immediate items such as toilet paper and photocopying machines.

Imbert said the reason for the procurement exemption was because foreign dignitaries including UN Secretary General António Guterres, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, US House of Representatives Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Rwanda President Paul Kagame, only confirmed their attendance a week or two before the three-day event.

Although there were numerous advertisements calling on service providers who do business with government to register with the office of the Procurement Regulator leading up to the April 26 enacting of the law, Imbert said only 861 are pre-qualified.

He added that based on the information he received, 7,889 suppliers were entered in the system, 861 pre-qualified for all or some of their businesses, 1,086 have pending pre-qualifications, and 32,357 lines of business are pending pre-qualification by public bodies, while 1,079 business were rejected.

He said many government departments have tremendous difficulties because their traditional supplies have not gone through the process of pre-qualification.

He said between April 26 to present, there was a whole group of businesses out of the syste