Revised Laws of Saint Lucia (2021)

2.   Interpretation

In this Act —

“accounting officer” means —

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   (a)     a Permanent Secretary in the procuring entity; or

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   (b)     a public officer who is the head of a department or who performs the duties of a head of department in the procuring entity;

“asset” —

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   (a)     in relation to a public-private partnership, includes an existing asset of a procuring entity or a new asset to be acquired for the purpose of entering into a public-private partnership contract;

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   (b)     in relation to disposal of assets —

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      (i)     includes intellectual and proprietary rights and goodwill and other rights of a procuring entity other than assets regulated by any other written law,

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      (ii)     does not include financial assets;

“Board” means the Central Public Procurement Board established under section 11;

“business case” means a business case developed under section 98;

“CARICOM” means the Caribbean Community established by Article 2 of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas establishing the Caribbean Community including the CARICOM Single Market and Economy signed at Nassau in the Bahamas on the 5^th day of July, 2001;

“Chairperson” means —

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   (a)     in relation to the Board, the Chairperson of the Board;

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   (b)     in relation to the Public Procurement Committee, the Chairperson of the Public Procurement Committee; and

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   (c)     in relation to the Steering Committee, the Chairperson of the Steering Committee;

“close relative” means a spouse, partner, parent, brother, sister or child;

“coercive practice” means harming or threatening to harm, directly or indirectly, a person or the property of a person, in order to influence that person's participation in a public procurement procedure or affect the execution of a public procurement contract;

“collusive practice” means a scheme or an arrangement between two or more tenderers, with or without the knowledge of a procuring entity, designed to establish prices of tenders at artificial or non-competitive levels;

“confidential information” means any fact that —

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   (a)     is available to any person under this Act; and

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   (b)     is not a matter of public knowledge or is not available to the public on request;

“contractor” means a person who has entered into a public procurement contract with a procuring entity;

“Core Team” means the Public-Private Partnership Core Team appointed under section 36;

“corrupt practice” means the giving, conferring, procuring, or promising or offering to give, confer or procure or attempt to procure, directly or indirectly anything of value to a public officer, to influence his or her action in a public procurement procedure or in the execution of a public procurement contract;

“design contest” means —

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   (a)     a competitive process between designers, architects, artists and such other service providers for creating or developing a sculpture, a layout, a structure, or a plan of a building, a bridge, a park or any such other specific object or facility; or

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   (b)     the procedure which enables a procuring entity to acquire, mainly in the field of physical planning and development, architectural, engineering or machine- readable designs or plans, after a competition, with or without prizes;

“Director” means the public officer appointed by the Public Service Commission to hold the office of Director of Public Procurement within the Ministry responsible for finance;

“disposal” means the transfer of assets by any means including sale, lease, franchise or any combination however classified;

“donor organisation” means an establishment based outside Saint Lucia which provides, or joins in providing, grants, credits or loans to the procuring entity;

“framework agreement” means a contract or other arrangement between one or more procuring entity and one or more supplier which establishes the terms and conditions under which the supplier enters into a contract with the procuring entity in the period during which the contract or arrangement applies;

“fraudulent practice” means —

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   (a)     a misrepresentation or omission of facts in order to influence a public procurement procedure or the execution of a public procurement contract;

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   (b)     the offering or giving, directly or indirectly, of improper inducements, in order to influence a public procurement procedure or the execution of a public procurement contract, including interference in the ability of competing tenderers to participate in public procurement procedures; or

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   (c)     any other deceptive conduct related to business or professional activities;

“goods” mean objects of every kind and description including commodities, raw materials, manufactured products and equipment, industrial plant, objects in solid, liquid or gaseous form, and services incidental to the supply of the goods such as freight and insurance;

“intermediate value” means the monetary amount specified as the intermediate value in Schedule 1;

“lot” means the division of the goods, services or works into several complete parts for tendering;

“major value” means the monetary amount specified as the major value in Schedule 1;

“member” means a member of the Board;

“Minister” means the Minister responsible for finance;

“minor value” means the monetary amount specified as the minor value in Schedule 1;

“misconduct”, in relation to a tenderer, includes price fixing, breach of confidentiality, a pattern of under-pricing, an act of corrupt practice and any delinquency relating to the responsibilities of the tenderer;

“OECS” means the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States established by the Treaty signed on 18 June 1981 at Basseterre, St. Kitts and continued under Article 2 of the Treaty of Basseterre Establishing the Organisation Eastern Caribbean States Economic Union;

“open competitive tendering” means the tendering procedure under section 57;

“person” includes a corporation or unincorporated body;

“pooling agreement” means a contract in which several national or a mixture of national and international procuring bodies perform together procurement procedures in order to make use of lower prices for commodities when purchased in higher quantities;

“procuring entity” —

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   (a)     means a Ministry, department or other agency of Government;

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   (b)     includes a Ministry that acts on behalf of a Constituency Council or statutory body;

“professional service” includes a legal, accounting, auditing or forensic service;

“project” means an activity identified under section 96 for implementation as a public-private partnership;

“Project Team” means the Public-Private Partnership Project Team appointed under section 33;

“public funds” include —

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   (a)     all revenue or other finance raised or received for the purpose of the Government; and

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   (b)     any monies or funds held, whether temporarily or otherwise, by any officer in his or her official capacity, alone or jointly with any other person, whether or not that person is an officer;

“public-private partnership” means investment through private sector participation in a project;

“public-private partnership contract” means an agreement between a procuring entity and a person in the private sector, made under this Act, in which the person —

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   (a)     undertakes to perform or undertakes the project;

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   (b)     assumes substantial financial, technical and operational risks in connection with the performance of the project; and

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   (c)     receives consideration for carrying out the project by way of —

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      (i)     a fee from any revenue fund or budgetary funds of the procuring entity,

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      (ii)     user fees collected by the person from users or customers for a service provided by it, or

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      (iii)     a combination of the consideration paid under sub-paragraphs (i) and (ii);

“public-private partnership transaction” includes the public procurement procedures under sections 100 to 110;

“public procurement” means the acquisition by a procuring entity of goods, works or services or any combination of such goods, works or services for or on behalf of a procuring entity, by way of purchase, lease, concession or hire purchase with or without an option to buy and not with a view to commercial resale or use in the production of goods and services for commercial sale;

“Public Procurement Committee” means the Public Procurement Committee appointed under section 23;

“public procurement contract” —

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   (a)     means an agreement between a procuring entity and a contractor resulting from public procurement procedures; and

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   (b)     includes an agreement under a framework agreement or an agreement evidenced by the issue of a purchase order;

“public procurement requirement” means the need for public procurement specified under section 40;

“Public Procurement Unit” means the division or department in a procuring entity that is responsible for public procurement;

“regional” means CARICOM or the OECS;

“responsive”, in relation to a tender, means receptive to the basic requirements of a tender regarding ability to perform and complete on time;

“services” means any consultancy service or non-consultancy service;

“specification” includes any description of —

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   (a)     the physical or functional characteristic of works, goods or services;

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   (b)     the nature of works, goods or services; and

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   (c)     any requirement for inspecting, testing or preparing works, goods or services for delivery;

“Steering Committee” means the Public-Private Partnership Steering Committee established under section 29;

“supplier” means a person who provides or could provide goods, services or works to a procuring entity;

“tender” means an offer submitted under section 67;

“tenderer” means a person who has submitted a tender;

“Tender Evaluation Committee” means the Tender Evaluation Committee appointed under section 26;

“tendering document” —

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   (a)     means any instrument issued by a procuring entity on the basis of which tenderers prepare tenders;

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   (b)     includes any instrument which contains instructions to tenderers, specifications, maps, designs, terms of reference, work schedules, evaluation criteria, bills of quantities, conditions of public procurement contract or other similar items;

“tender security” means the commitment instrument required to ensure that a tender remains valid during the period stated in the tendering document;

“Vice Chairperson” means either of the 2 Vice-Chairpersons of the Board;

“works” mean any job associated with the construction, reconstruction, demolition, repair or renovation of a building, structure or works, such as site preparation, excavation, erection, building, installation of equipment or materials, decoration and finishing, as well as services incidental to construction such as drilling, mapping, satellite photography, seismic investigations and similar services.