The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune News Editor

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

NEARLY one in four government contracts awarded between December 2023 and December 2025 was handed out without competitive bidding, with those no-bid deals accounting for a large share of public spending.

A review of official procurement records found 927 contracts were awarded without bids out of 3,881 categorised contracts during the period. The records are far from complete. State-owned enterprises are absent from them and have never complied with the Act’s requirement to publish procurement awards.

No-bid contracts were worth about $233.6m, a significant portion of the roughly $599.1m total value of all contracts in the dataset.

The Public Procurement Act, 2023 says competitive bidding should be the standard method for awarding government contracts.

The law allows contracts to be awarded without bidding only in limited circumstances, including low-value purchases under $100,000, emergencies, failed bidding processes, or where only one supplier is available. It also requires agencies to justify why competition was bypassed.

The data shows no-bid spending remains concentrated in a small number of large contracts.

The largest was a $180.2m contract awarded in October 2024 for the Eleuthera Road Improvement Project by the Ministry of Finance.

Beyond that, the remaining contracts drop sharply in size, including a $7.25m award for South Andros road works, a $2.82m contract for Bimini road repairs, a $2.2m contract for repairs to the Queen Elizabeth Sports Centre National Stadium, and a $2.04m contract for electrical and lighting repairs at the Thomas A Robinson Stadium.

The Ministry of Finance dominated no-bid spending, accounting for the bulk of the $233.6m total. The Department of Public Works followed at a much smaller share.

While most no-bid contracts were relatively small, the bulk of the money was not.

Of the 928 contracts awarded without bidding, 848 were worth $100,000 or less, together totalling about $17m. By contrast, just 80 contracts above that threshold accounted for the vast majority of the remaining value. The law explicitly allows no-bid awards for contracts under $100,000. Larger contracts must meet stricter conditions, such as urgency, lack of competition, or technical constraints limiting suppliers.

The records do not explain which justification was used in each case.

The Act requires procurement decisions to be documented and contract awards to be published so the public can scrutinise how contracts are awarded.