Trinidad and Tobago’s public procurement system handled $16 billion in awards in fiscal year 2024/2025, up from $13.7 billion the year before, but the Office of Procurement Regulation says the rise in activity has not been matched by better compliance, competition or delivery.
In its 2026 annual report, laid in Parliament on Friday, the regulator said the value of reported procurement amounted to a conservative 9.2 per cent of GDP. Yet it also warned that the system remains w...
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eighed down by weak reporting, poor data quality and a growing stock of unfinished work, including about $3 billion in unfulfilled contracts.
Beverley Khan, the OPR’s chairman and procurement regulator, said in the foreword that many public bodies have still not properly embedded the requirements of the procurement law into day-to-day governance. According to her, agencies continued to rely on older practices, while reporting remained inconsistent and oversight was hampered by missing or unreliable data.
The report said quarterly reporting compliance never rose above 63.8 per cent during the year. It also described the quality of submissions as poor, citing missing dates, misclassification and suspected duplicate entries. About a third of reported awards were made without Annual Schedule of Planned Procurement Activities reference numbers, weakening the connection between actual spending and approved planning.
The OPR said the problem is no longer simply one of familiarity with the law. In Khan’s view, the question is whether public bodies have genuinely accepted procurement reform as a core governance duty rather than a paperwork exercise. She said the reforms introduced under the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property Act had not yet been consistently built into planning, decision-making and performance management across the public sector.
Competition remains another major weakness. Although open bidding is supposed to be the default, it accounted for only 7.6 per cent of reported awards. Single-source procurement, by contrast, represented 46.2 per cent of total award value, up sharply from the previous reporting period. The report also noted that 1,644 competitive exercises attracted only one bid, raising questions about market participation and value for money.
Administrative patterns in the system suggest procurement is still being used mainly as a transactional function. Micro procurement accounted for 124,909 awards, or 88.3 per cent of total volume, while purchase orders made up 78.4 per cent of procurement activity above $75,000 and 55.8 per cent of total reported spend.
Execution problems were just as stark. Public bodies reported $3 billion in unfulfilled contracts during the year, with 97.7 per cent classified as incomplete or delayed. Contract variations rose from 823 to 1,157, driven largely by extensions of time. The regulator said these figures pointed to persistent weaknesses in contract management as well as procurement planning.
The report was especially critical of regional health authorities. Despite a collective allocation of about $5 billion, the RHAs reported procurement spending of only $875 million, or 17.5 per cent of the amount assigned to them. The OPR said their heavy reliance on purchase orders and micro procurement suggested little change in practice since the legislation came into force.
Some improvements were recorded. More public bodies identified accounting officers and named procurement officers, but the regulator said progress was uneven. Only 45 per cent of bodies published their procurement schedules by the statutory deadline, and fewer than 40 per cent had fully functioning procurement and disposal advisory committees and disposal committees.
Khan also warned that some of the issues uncovered through audits and investigations suggested a tendency in certain quarters to sidestep regulatory obligations rather than embrace reform. She said that was unacceptable, adding that compliance could not be treated as optional or negotiable.
Looking ahead, the OPR plans to step up risk-based oversight, performance measurement and enforcement. Among the measures under consideration are electronic government procurement, stronger monitoring systems, more investigations and audits, better performance indicators and legislative amendments to introduce administrative fines for non-compliance.
Economist Dr Vanus James said the report should be treated as a warning that statutory red flags risk becoming routine if the system is not overhauled. He said the findings echoed long-standing concerns raised for decades by the Auditor General and pointed to the need for broader institutional reform if oversight is to improve.
The OPR insists the reform agenda is still achievable. But, in its assessment, delivery will depend less on the regulator than on public bodies themselves, which must move beyond minimum compliance and treat procurement as a strategic tool for stronger institutions, better fiscal management and development outcomes.
Source: Noah Wire Services
