Vice President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo says the government is currently sanitising a massive list of nearly 12,000 companies that registered under its recent pre-qualification exercise for small contractors.
Jagdeo made the disclosure while speaking with journalists at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, where he and other Cabinet members were meeting with citizens on a range of issues.
According to the Vice President, the pre-qualification exercise was introduced to improve transparency in the award of small contracts and to allow more ordinary Guyanese to benefit.
He said that in the past, contracts below $15 million were awarded in keeping with the Procurement Act, but some people complained they were unaware of the process. The pre-qualification system, he explained, was intended to make the process more open and accessible.
Jagdeo said the government received submissions from almost 12,000 small contractors, but cleaning the list has proven to be a difficult task.
Among the issues he said are cases in which multiple members of the same family submitted separate companies, despite such arrangements being barred under the pre-qualification rules. He also said some larger contractors have been attempting to enter the pool reserved for smaller players.
“So it’s been a difficult exercise to clean the list,” Jagdeo said, while noting that technical staff and ministers have been involved in the vetting process.
The Vice President said the administration hopes that every contractor who is legitimately pre-qualified will be able to benefit over the course of the year, though not all at once.
He stressed that if, after the clean-up, about 11,000 contractors remain legitimately qualified, the government will work to ensure that each gets at least one contract during the year.
At the same time, Jagdeo acknowledged that some people are frustrated because contracts have already begun to be awarded and not everyone can be accommodated immediately.
“But everyone wants to go in the first round,” he said, adding that it would be impossible to award thousands of contracts simultaneously.
He said the broader goal is to help small contractors grow across all 10 administrative regions, rather than concentrating opportunities in the hands of a few major players.
Jagdeo maintained that the exercise reflects a deliberate policy decision by the government to widen access to procurement and build up a larger base of small Guyanese contractors.
