The Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, the Hon. Philip Davis introduced the Public Procurement Bill 2022 in the House of Assembly. When enacted this bill would replace the existing Act.
In his communication on the subject, Mr. Davis said, “we believe that public procurement, when used correctly, is a tool to correct some of the historical inequalities in our system.”
Some of the changes in the proposed legislation include a revised application process, new framework agreements, a new seven member board and a reorganized bidding process. The bill also discourages and detects abuse and encourages the development of micro, small and medium sized businesses as well as female, youth owned and Family Island based businesses.
Mr. Davis went on to explain the new process saying, “contracts that are more than $25,000 but less than $400,000 evaluate and recommend the award of the contract to the Minister, the committee will evaluate, the Tenders Committee, within the entity, will evaluate and make a recommendation of the award of the contract to the Minister responsible for the procuring entity. This numbers was formally $50,000 to $250,000. Contracts that are more than $400,000 but less than $2.5 million are forwarded to the Tenders Board along with the tender committee’s recommendation for the board’s approval. Contracts for over $2.5 million ae forwarded, again, by the tender’s committee with their recommendation to the Board for their recommendation and after that the Board shall forward its recommendation to Cabinet for approval.”
The Prime Minister also explained that with the amount of changes, including several new clauses and definitions being made to the act, repealing was a better approach than amending the current act.
