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But at the start of the PUP's term in office, Plan Belize promised that all bidding and procurement processes would be made public and easily accessible. It stated that the media and the wider public would know everything the government buys, how much they spent, and from who they bought it.
Four years later, we're not seeing anything like that. Usher conceded that they haven't quite fulfilled that commitment.
Henry Charles Usher, Minister of Public Service
"There's still a lot of work to do in terms of procurement, but the centralization and the improvement in the procurement practices you can't say that that has not happened. There is a procurement unit now that deals with all government purchases. Those purchases go to proper tender every time. I can tell you, for instance, just from the Ministry of Public Service, we are doing a training right now for elections and boundaries officers to give them, you know, capacity building within that department. And because the value of the contract was more than $50,000, we had to go through a very rigid procurement process just for Galen University to do this training. Now, Galen University is a well-established university, well-established practices. They've done training before. But despite all of that, that track record, we still have to go through that process. I can tell you that this is a very rigorous process, and that the improvements in the procurement practices of government have been there. You are right. There's more work to be done. And I have always said that it's, you know, when government purchases any products or contracts or does any kind of services, the media should know about it. The public should know about it."
