The latest Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perception Index relies on perceptions from a variety of sources including international financial institutions. In its relatively brief existence TI has gained something of a reputation in trying to determine the extent of corruption in countries. Its latest report puts Guyana in the unenviable position of 121 out of 163 - vis-a-vis its fellow Caricom countries - ahead of only Haiti which came in last. Suriname placed 90, Trinidad 79 - a significant deterioration of its position as a result of some well-known corruption scandals - and bellwether Barbados at 24. Guyana remains in the same category as it was in last year: perception of rampant corruption.

It will hardly surprise people that Guyana is in this category given the levels of poverty, the weak economy and the large public sector infrastructural programme. Public contracting is often seen as the largest pool of funds on which the corrupt feed.

Says TI: "The area of public contracting is often perceived as a grey and remote area strictly under the jurisdiction of government authorities and the private entity contracted to provide goods and services… Corruption in public contracting leads to: a distortion of fair business competition, the waste of scarce resources, the neglect of basic needs".

After the examination of the public contracting systems in nine Latin American countries: Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela, TI came up with not unexpected findings, several of which are particularly relevant to us here in Guyana. Corruption was facilitated by weak or absent access to information, limited factual information on the performance of public procurement systems and the lack of civil society participation.

These weaknesses are present here. Despite the replacement of the much-maligned Central Tender Board via constitutional reforms and its replacement with the National Procurement and Tender Adminis-tration (NPTA), the public knows more about NASA's manned space flights than it does about the state of procurement here. Even if one were invited to see the NPTA opening tender boxes, as the government has enabled to placate critics, there is no information on how many bids were entered, their respective values, how many were responsive and the factors that influenced selection and therefore no reasonable basis to assess the functioning of the system.

Worse, the Commission to oversee the NPTA and the tribunal to handle appeals of decisions are not yet in place several years after the launch of the NPTA. How then under these opaque conditions can any serious-minded analyst have confidence in public procurement or even perceive it as such?

Unfortunately, the NPTA commission remains bogged down in the paralysis wrought by the two main political parties. The PPP/C is insisting on candidates whom the PNCR says are completely unsuitable according to the criteria set by the constitution. And there the matter rests.

Institutional strength is also important. There are valid concerns that the Audit Office has lost its vigour and even during its heyday there was blatant violation of rules via endless contract splitting and other irregularities. Though the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament has grappled with its task it still has to clear backlogged accounts and it needs to be able to pronounce on and have some impact upon current issues.

Problems abound in other areas which have created grey areas of unaccountability and fertile ground for graft to flourish. Going way back to the milk powder scandal, the PPP and its governments have steadfastly refused to hold people accountable and prosecute them. Its preferred method is to remove or banish. And there are many examples, none more shocking than the dolphin business deal within the Office of the President itself which ensnared three functionaries and which led to pressure being brought to bear on Auditor General Anand Goolsarran by one of the said officials when it appeared that a new investigation was to be conducted. The Auditor General eventually decided to call it quits and to accept a posting at the United Nations. The result was that no basis for prosecution could be determined and the state audit office has been weakened by his departure.

Falling well within TI's concerns about public procurement is the handling of contracts for emergency flood work in 2005 and 2006. A solemn promise was made by the President that a supplemental flood budget would be laid in Parliament on the massive spending for the 2005 flood. This was never done. How would this reflect on commitments at the highest level and in the determination of whether there was any fraud and if value for money was gotten?

The floods of this year brought a similar conundrum to the surface. Following the flooding in Berbice in January this year, emergency contracts worth $118M were handed out. When news of this reached the President he spoke out publicly at a meeting of Christian leaders at State House. He was concerned that this sum wasn't even spent in a whole year in the region and so a team was dispatched to the area to scrutinize the works. His consternation would no doubt have been well received. However, nothing has been heard since; a typical problem of not following through particularly when the public has been led to believe that a serious problem exists. From this newspaper's own inquiries, it appears that only $71M was eventually paid to the contractors - a difference of $47M. Did the contractors try to gouge the government and did they nearly succeed because of poor supervising and oversight by the region? The public should be told. It isn't insignificant that a leading light in the PPP has not been returned as Chairman of the all important Region Six.

Quite interestingly, in a recent interview with Stabroek News, the same former chairman, Kumkarran Ramdass, made the discomfiting statement that many projects are being done improperly. "We are not getting value for our money and we have been unable to monitor works being executed since we do not have the capacity to do so. Some contractors as a result get away with poor quality work while road repairs are affected by poor quality road building materials. Unfortunately no contractor has been black-listed for sub-standard work (and) there is great need for improvement in this area," he said.

Which brings us to another of TI's concerns: that enormous costs are borne by the public when funds are allocated to incompetent or unqualified contractors. This remains a serious problem here particularly in the absence of legislation for the registration of engineers, contractors etc. Despite being promised a long time ago to the engineers body this law is still to be put in place. Its absence has spawned many overnight contractors and engineers who would not have been able to even apply for contracts if the law were in place.

We have recently catalogued a series of contracting failures at schools and the resultant cost to the public coffers and to students and their parents. TI's case study of six large contracts in Nicaragua awarded for school maintenance found that the quality of contracted work was inferior owing to poor technical supervision and that weak project pre-investment and poor administration caused extra contract costs, delays in start-up of works and other irregularities. A very familiar scenario here.

Perceptions aside, the country and its people could be paying a very high price because of corruption. If the government wants to be sure that this isn't the case or wants to stamp it out, it must become more transparent and open up all of its procurement dealings to independent scrutiny.