The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

A SURVEY has revealed that 55 per cent of Bahamian contractors regularly experience what they consider “unfair” bidding practices, with a senior Bahamian Contractors Association (BCA) official telling Tribune Business it was seeking greater transparency in the Government procurement process.

In an interview with Tribune Business during the inaugural Regional Conference of Caribbean Contractors, Stephen Wrinkle, the BCA’s immediate past president, noted that “unfair bidding practices” in an industry such as construction was a very broad topic.

“One of the questions asked in the survey dealt with the bidding practices currently in place in the country at this time, and many of the contractors, 55 per cent of the respondents, confirmed that they had experienced what they considered unfair bidding practices,” said Mr Wrinkle.

Some 200 out of 2,000 Bahamian contractors from Abaco, Grand Bahama, Eleuthera, Exuma and Long Island had participated in the survey.

“Unfair biding practices in an industry like construction is a very broad term,” Mr Wrinkle said. “There are a lot of variables involved, but our focus is with regard to bidding practices; to try and get the Government bidding into a very public and standardised format. so that it is transparent to the contractors.

“I know it is difficult in some cases, but there is a tremendous amount of work in this country that is not out out to tender, and we would like to see a published list of tender projects that are upcoming that we could then put on our website, so that prospective contractors would have an idea of upcoming works and they could prepare to participate in the tender process.”

Mr Wrinkle added: “What happens now in many cases is there will be a publication in the newspaper to pick up documents Tuesday, and Monday the bids are due. In many cases people are not aware that the tendering is going on, and so they immediately say it’s unfair tendering and bidding. But, in fact, it’s just that we do not have good, established protocols to put the work out there so that the maximum amount of participants can be exposed to it.

“The other side of this coin for tendering is the fact the we don’t have any certification or licensing protocol in place, so when the Government puts a project out for tender it has no control over who responds. You could get 100 people respond and not have any assurance of their capabilities.

“The only thing we seem to have in place now is what they call an approved list, and that’s no more than someone who has done work for the government agency, and has maybe or maybe not done it in accordance to what they were supposed to. It’s a political tool that is sometimes used.”

Mr Wrinkle added that the BCA had obtained a $225,000 Inter-American Development Bank(IDB) grant to strengthen the organistion. Mr Wrinkle said the grant funding consisted of three components; training, the standardisation of contract documents and promoting knowledge-sharing partnerships.