From deficits to missions:

From deficits to missions: Can Tobago lead a procurement revolution?

As I ar­gued last week, as Par­lia­ment de­bates Bud­get 2026, the ques­tion is not whether the num­bers add up, but whether the rules that dri­ve them make sense. Our fis­cal ar­chi­tec­ture still re­wards spend­ing, not sav­ing.

Un­der the Ex­che­quer and Au­dit Act (EAA), un­spent bal­ances lapse at year-end and must be sur­ren­dered to the Trea­sury. The rule was writ­ten to pro­tect the pub­lic purse, but it has come to dis­in­cen­tivise pru­dence. The re­sult of this bud­get dis­in­cen­tive is the rit­u­al Sep­tem­ber burn, pur­chas­es rushed, con­tracts frag­ment­ed, out­comes un­cer­tain.

Oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions have reengi­neered this in­cen­tive. In the Unit­ed King­dom, the Trea­sury’s bud­get ex­change mech­a­nism al­lows de­part­ments to car­ry for­ward a lim­it­ed share of un­spent funds, up to 1 per cent of re­source and two per cent of cap­i­tal De­part­men­tal Ex­pen­di­ture Lim­its (DELs) in­to the next fis­cal year, pro­vid­ed those bal­ances and their pur­pos­es are re­port­ed to Par­lia­ment in the Sup­ple­men­tary Es­ti­mates.

The ef­fect is sub­tle but pow­er­ful: pru­dence is no longer dis­in­cen­tivised. By link­ing car­ry-for­wards to ver­i­fied un­der­spends and trans­par­ent dis­clo­sure, the sys­tem turns a cul­ture of “use-it-or-lose-it” in­to one of mea­sured ef­fi­cien­cy.

Be­hav­iour­al econ­o­mists Richard Thaler and Cass Sun­stein call it “choice ar­chi­tec­ture”: peo­ple re­spond to how rules frame their op­tions. When rules make pru­dence vis­i­ble and re­ward­ing, cul­ture shifts. What we need is not ex­hor­ta­tion, but de­sign i.e. rules that make pru­dence the path of least re­sis­tance.

To­ba­go al­ready op­er­ates un­der a dif­fer­ent fis­cal log­ic. Un­der Sec­tion 48 of the THA Act, un­spent bal­ances stay in the THA Fund for cap­i­tal in­vest­ment, free­ing it from Trinidad’s ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ trap. Yet the ad­van­tage re­mains large­ly dor­mant. There is, as yet, no trans­par­ent sys­tem for doc­u­ment­ing pro­cure­ment sav­ings, no struc­tured rein­vest­ment mech­a­nism, and no de­lib­er­ate strat­e­gy to con­vert fis­cal flex­i­bil­i­ty in­to in­no­va­tion.

To­ba­go’s frame­work con­tains the le­gal plumb­ing for a bet­ter mod­el; what is miss­ing is the sys­tem de­sign. With the right ar­chi­tec­ture, clear re­port­ing, au­dit­ed sav­ings and open da­ta, To­ba­go could be­come a cen­tre for pro­cure­ment ex­cel­lence, demon­strat­ing how fis­cal dis­ci­pline and de­vel­op­men­tal am­bi­tion can co­ex­ist.

Econ­o­mist Mar­i­ana Maz­zu­ca­to has long ar­gued that gov­ern­ments must move be­yond fix­ing mar­ket fail­ures to shap­ing mar­kets around pub­lic mis­sion out­comes that in­te­grate eco­nom­ic, so­cial and en­vi­ron­men­tal pur­pose. In her Mis­sion Econ­o­my, she re­minds us,”the most suc­cess­ful states are not big­ger or small­er, but bold­er in pur­pose.”

T&T’s Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act 2015 was de­signed for such bold pub­lic pur­pose. Sec­tion 5 lists among its ob­jec­tives lo­cal in­dus­try de­vel­op­ment, sus­tain­able pro­cure­ment, and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment. Our mis­sions are al­ready writ­ten in­to law. The chal­lenge now is to align bud­getary and pro­cure­ment prac­tice so that these ob­jec­tives are not rhetor­i­cal, but op­er­a­tional.

At the heart of that align­ment lies the prin­ci­ple of Val­ue for Pub­lic Mon­ey (Vf­PM) — not a sin­gle met­ric but a com­pass of the sev­en Es of ethos, econ­o­my, ef­fi­cien­cy, ef­fec­tive­ness, eq­ui­ty, ecol­o­gy and emer­gence align­ing ethics, out­comes, and adap­ta­tion. Seen through that lens, mis­sion-ori­ent­ed pro­cure­ment is the 7E frame­work in mo­tion. It asks: what com­plex val­ue are we try­ing to cre­ate, and which method best re­alis­es it?

Some­times open com­pe­ti­tion will suf­fice; at oth­er times ear­ly sup­pli­er in­volve­ment, col­lab­o­ra­tive part­ner­ships, or frame­work agree­ments that let sev­er­al ca­pa­ble sup­pli­ers share the work. Pro­cure­ment must do both — dri­ve ef­fi­cien­cy and el­e­vate val­ue.

Our sys­tem re­design could be­gin with a pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­to­ry sand­box in To­ba­go. The fis­cal ar­chi­tec­ture re­quires no amend­ment. A con­trolled en­vi­ron­ment au­tho­rised by the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) that al­lows To­ba­go’s pub­lic bod­ies to test new pro­cure­ment ap­proach­es with­in de­fined safe­guards. The idea of reg­u­la­to­ry sand­box­es is not unique. In a com­plex re­al­i­ty where tra­di­tion­al method­olo­gies are no longer fit for pur­pose, coun­tries across the globe are recog­nis­ing the need for change.

First for­malised by the UK Fi­nan­cial Con­duct Au­thor­i­ty in 2016, the idea of a sand­box has since spread far be­yond fi­nance: Sin­ga­pore has used it to pi­lot dig­i­tal gov­ern­ment and health-tech so­lu­tions; Nor­way’s Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Au­thor­i­ty ap­plies it to pri­va­cy-friend­ly ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence; and the state of Utah has pi­o­neered a le­gal-ser­vices sand­box to widen ac­cess to jus­tice.

Most re­cent­ly, reg­u­la­to­ry sand­box­es are be­ing linked to pub­lic pro­cure­ment in­no­va­tion through Pre-Com­mer­cial Pro­cure­ment (PCP) and pub­lic pro­cure­ment of In­no­v­a­tive So­lu­tions (PPI), par­tic­u­lar­ly in the EU con­text where the AI Act al­lows sand­box­ing be­fore de­ploy­ment.

The Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion an­nounced plans for 2026 re­form of pub­lic pro­cure­ment frame­works to in­clude more tar­get­ted pro­cure­ment with non-price cri­te­ria for sus­tain­abil­i­ty, re­silience and in­no­va­tion

The prin­ci­ple is con­sis­tent across all sec­tors: a sand­box is not dereg­u­la­tion but dis­ci­plined ex­per­i­men­ta­tion, a safe space where reg­u­la­tors per­mit tem­po­rary, su­per­vised tri­als to learn what works be­fore rules are per­ma­nent­ly changed.

In To­ba­go, no leg­isla­tive re­form would be nec­es­sary. Sec­tions 13 and 54 of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act 2015 em­pow­ers the OPR to ap­prove spe­cial guide­lines and hand­books for any pub­lic body, pro­mote tech­nol­o­gy and stan­dard­ise con­tracts. The Pro­cure­ment (Meth­ods and Pro­ce­dures) Reg­u­la­tions 2021, Reg­u­la­tion 5 (1), es­tab­lish­es open bid­ding as the de­fault but al­lows oth­er meth­ods where they bet­ter achieve val­ue for mon­ey.

Us­ing those pow­ers, the OPR could au­tho­rise a 24 to 36-month sand­box un­der spe­cial guide­lines. The guide­lines could per­mit func­tion­al or out­come-based spec­i­fi­ca­tions; pi­lot frame­work agree­ments, e-cat­a­logues and col­lab­o­ra­tive pro­cure­ment mod­els; use re­verse auc­tions on­ly where goods are stan­dard­ised; and launch in­no­va­tion part­ner­ships for needs with no ready so­lu­tion.

Every sand­box lot would re­main ful­ly com­pli­ant with the THA Act, es­ti­mates, ap­pro­pri­a­tion, in­ter­nal au­dit and over­sight by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al.

The goal is not dereg­u­la­tion but learn­ing through con­trolled ex­per­i­men­ta­tion. Each pi­lot would gen­er­ate da­ta on price vari­ance, bid­ders per lot, cy­cle time and de­liv­ery per­for­mance, al­low­ing To­ba­go to build ev­i­dence for what works. In this way, the is­land’s fis­cal flex­i­bil­i­ty be­comes an in­stru­ment for mea­sured in­no­va­tion that can be utilised na­tion­al­ly, and even re­gion­al­ly.

To give that in­no­va­tion last­ing form, To­ba­go could es­tab­lish a trans­par­ent ac­count­ing mech­a­nism, a Pro­cure­ment Sav­ings and Pub­lic Val­ue (PSPV) Win­dow with­in the THA Fund. Ver­i­fied sav­ings from com­plet­ed pro­cure­ments would be cred­it­ed to this ring-fenced ac­count and, un­der sec­tion 48, re­tained for cap­i­tal in­vest­ment in sub­se­quent years.

This does not in­crease ex­pen­di­ture; it sim­ply records and re­de­ploys ef­fi­cien­cy. By trac­ing how and where sav­ings arise, the THA could demon­strate that re­duced al­lo­ca­tions re­flect re­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gains, not un­der­spend­ing.

Over time, trans­paren­cy it­self cre­ates fis­cal space: cen­tral gov­ern­ment can see which projects re­quire less sup­port and which new ini­tia­tives mer­it fund­ing. The PSPV thus be­comes both a be­hav­iour­al and an in­for­ma­tion­al re­form, in­cen­tivis­ing pru­dence, in­no­va­tion and re­veal­ing per­for­mance.

For Trinidad’s cen­tral gov­ern­ment, the path is less di­rect, but it ex­ists. Sec­tion 43 of the EAA au­tho­ris­es the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, with the Pres­i­dent’s ap­proval, to es­tab­lish spe­cial funds whose bal­ances do not lapse at year-end. Per­haps con­sid­er­a­tion could be giv­en to us­ing that pow­er to cre­ate a Pro­cure­ment Sav­ings and Pub­lic Val­ue Fund or a se­ries of en­ti­ty-lev­el funds, with­in which ver­i­fied pro­cure­ment sav­ings can be record­ed and, where ap­pro­pri­ate, re­tained and re-ap­plied to mis­sion-aligned projects.

Such funds would re­main un­der Trea­sury di­rec­tion and au­dit, op­er­at­ing en­tire­ly with­in the ex­ist­ing fis­cal con­trol sys­tem. Whether they take the form of in­di­vid­ual sub-ac­counts or a sin­gle na­tion­al win­dow is a pol­i­cy choice. The prin­ci­ple is what mat­ters: doc­u­ment­ed ef­fi­cien­cy should not van­ish in­to the Con­sol­i­dat­ed Fund; it should be­come the foun­da­tion for rein­vest­ment and learn­ing.

Dif­fer­ent le­gal routes, one in To­ba­go, an­oth­er in Trinidad, can con­verge on a sin­gle na­tion­al goal: turn­ing sav­ings in­to a mech­a­nism for the re­gen­er­a­tion of pub­lic val­ue.

If Bud­get 2026 is to mark a turn­ing point, it will not be through an­oth­er tax or deficit tar­get but through co­her­ence, align­ing fis­cal and pro­cure­ment sys­tems around learn­ing, in­no­va­tion, and pub­lic val­ue.

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