Julius Espat, Minister of Infrastructure Development & Housing
"We are joining with IDB and CBD who are the international financial institutions, they follow a procurement methodology. We follow it when we have loans with them and I think it's a good, the idea is to the inform people so that the contractors in Belize can have an idea of what it means to bid on different types of projects. As you are aware in the first phase, it's a bit theoretic and it takes a lot of time but it's important that you follow the rules and the rules are very specific and so that's what we're trying to do, opening it up so that people can have an idea what it is and to have more contractors be informed so that they can participate."

Doug Fraser, Head of Procurement, CDB
"This morning I was talking about two main areas, one is the importance of planning and taking time to look at the wider context before embarking on a procurement process and the other area that I was speaking to is how to conduct a bidding process, best practice."

"I think generally, public procurement is still a developing area across the region and internationally, actually, so it's an emerging profession and I think therefore it's natural that we have events such as this to deepen the professional expertise and experience. The two areas that I would pull out, not just here in Belize but generally across the region, we're looking to support our countries with planning an evaluation because those are sort of critical areas in the process."

"I think this is, as you said, part of a longer term initiative. We've had a very long and fruitful initiative with the government of Belize so I think we'll be looking with our partners at IDB to do similar events. We're already discussing potentially another one next year. We also have our own resources we make available to our clients, we have online procurement learning, which is available at no cost and we also run things such as scholarships for procurement leader for the future. That's something we actually did in collaboration with IDB this year for a master's program in Italy and we're very happy actually that there's a candidate that's been selected from Belize to go on that program."

And procurement procedures go hand in hand with transparency. That's because political parties often use procurements as a way to hustle. It was a practice Minister Espat railed against when he was in Opposition, and looking through the lens of the public, it doesn't seem like PUP is any different.

Espat begged to differ, though.

Julius Espat, Minister of Infrastructure Development & Housing
"Why have you said that it hasn't change?"

Courtney Menzies:
"To our- what we can observe."

Julius Espat, Minister of Infrastructure Development & Housing
"But you have to be specific to be able to make a comment like that. I believe we have changed and that's why we're showing everybody how we do it. And people have to understand, as the gentleman explained, if it is financed by CDB or IDB or whichever of the international financial institutions, they have a whole series of procedures and regulations that that they force you to implement. We as the government of Belize, we can sit with them and start a dialog. Our biggest request is for the financial specifications to not be so high that our local contractors cannot bid. That's basically where we have differences of opinion and how we sit down around the table, after that is done then it goes to the procurement procedure. As you will see as it goes along, it's a long process and we go through everything phase. You have an evaluation committee, in our case in Belize, we have to go back to the Ministry of Finance for them to approve it. So they have a separate evaluation team. And after that is done, then we send it to the contractor general, who is here today, and she has to give the final vetting. And from then, then it goes out."