IC WANTS SPENDING CHECK

THE Integrity Commission (IC) has called for full documentation and independent review of 476 Government contracts valued at $5 billion that public bodies identified as related to Hurricane Melissa recovery, raising questions about how the spending will be reviewed as Jamaica rebuilds after the disaster. The contracts were awarded in the final quarter of 2025, with most using emergency or single-source procurement methods. In its special report to Parliament titled ‘Public Procurement in Jamaica: Key Trends and Issues — Contract Awards in 2025, with Trends from 2006 to 2025’, tabled in the House on Tuesday, the commission said 182 of the recovery-related contracts, valued at $3.9 billion, were awarded through emergency procurement. Another 262 were awarded through single- source procurement, while 32 were awarded through restricted bidding. “These awards warrant full documentation and independent review by the relevant authorities, and will be examined further in the commission’s report on its special monitoring programme, which is ongoing,” Director of Investigation Kevon Stephenson wrote in the report. The findings come against the background of a sharp rise in emergency contracting last year, as public bodies responded to urgent needs, including those arising from the hurricane. The commission reported that emergency contracts for the year totalled $16.3 billion across 588 contracts, a 63 per cent increase in value over 2024. Of that amount, $10.5 billion, covering 331 contracts, was awarded in the final quarter of 2025. The report said $9.7 billion of that fourth-quarter spending, across 278 contracts, was awarded on or after October 28, 2025, when Hurricane Melissa struck Jamaica. Stephenson acknowledged in the report the necessity for emergency procurement, but said the circumstances created heightened risks that required scrutiny. “The DI (director of investigations) recognises that emergency procurement was necessary to preserve life and to restore essential services. However, the period following the hurricane was one of heightened procurement risk, by reason of the scale of emergency contracting, the size of certain individual awards, the use of emergency methods for contracts other than those identified as related to recovery, and the exemption of emergency procurement from the ordinary rules,” he wrote. The report also raised concerns about how some hurricane-related contracts were recorded. It identified 360 single-source awards in 2025, valued at $840 million, whose descriptions referred to a hurricane but which were recorded as ordinary single-source contracts. Of those, 337 were made in the final quarter of the year. The commission cautioned that some of these awards might already be included among the 262 single-source contracts identified as related to recovery. However, the report said the records indicated that emergency spending may have been understated and that the identification of disaster-related contracts was incomplete. The findings do not establish that the recovery contracts were improperly awarded or that the spending involved wrongdoing. Rather, the commission is calling for the relevant authorities to examine the awards and the records supporting them. The report also recommends stronger checks after emergency spending. These include requiring public bodies to report on their procurement activities following a declared disaster and improving oversight of emergency contracts, including checks on whether the Government received value for money. The commission’s special monitoring programme remains under way, with further examination of procurement connected to the hurricane response and recovery expected to be addressed separately.