Al Rawi: Public procurement to be implemented this year

Al Rawi said public procurement is law in Trinidad and Tobago and at Wednesday’s State Boards Corporate Governance Seminar 2017 held at the Hyatt Regency Trinidad, the Minister of Finance issued a circular stating that the Public Procurement Unit must be installed in every State enterprise and every ministry immediately so that it can go into operation by April. He said all that is required is for President Anthony Aquinas Carmona to ensure that the Procurement Regulator is hired. Al Rawi made the statement while delivering the feature address at an Economic Outlook Forum hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce of Trinidad and Tobago at the Hilton Trinidad and Conference Centre.

He added that electronic monitoring for offenders is also being put into operation as an option for sentencing. He said the law allowing for this was passed some time ago but never implemented.

He said that when someone is put in prison for not paying a fine of $12,000, for example, it costs the State $25,000 per month to keep that person in jail. He said the option of using electronic monitoring is real - all that is necessary is to put an anklet on that person and he can be allowed to remain outside, reporting periodically to the police station nearest his residence and he could continue working and contributing to the support of his family. He said all that is required to put this law into operation is the equipment, and a service provider with a fibre network in the country that could do the geographical mapping to permit the tracking of the person.

Al Rawi said that with all the talk of crime and white-collar crime in the country, the major fraud case in TT is the Piarco Airport Inquiry which he said has been in the Magistrate’s Court for seventeen years and still has to go to the High Court, the Appeal Court and possibly the Privy Council. Meanwhile, he said while doing an audit at the Attorney General’s Office, he saw a strange painting on the wall and after inquiring it turned out to be repatriated assets from the other accused in the Piarco Airport case in the United States where there had already been conviction, sentences served, and assets forfeited and sent back to TT. He said it was a very expensive painting which went missing from an international artist and was found in the possession of one of the persons in the Piarco Airport case, making the point that at the same time the local case has been seventeen years in the Magistrates’ Court. Stressing that he was not attributing guilt to any party, the Attorney General said the important thing was not how many laws are passed but whether they are put into operation.

He also said that there was no need for legislation for FATCA, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. He said it was open to TT to avoid Government involvement by having the banking sector produce the information to the United States authorities by simply asking their clients for permission to send their information. He said they could then just ask those who refused to close their accounts, but he said that in 2013 the Government of Trinidad and Tobago twice took decisions by way of Cabinet notes to sign an inter-governmental agreement and adopt the reciprocity model and by doing so committed the Government to a path which said it had to pass legislation in Parliament authorising FATCA.