Ministry Updates Contractor Registry to Accelerate Low-Income Housing Projects

The Ministry of Infrastructure Development and Housing (MIDH) is updating its registry of contractors in hopes of fast-tracking the country-wide construction of starter homes. The ministry has embarked on identifying suitable contractors to participate in its Low-Income Modular Housing Project and believes the exercise will help. It will also create opportunities for contractor employment across the public and private sectors. Yesterday, the Minister of Infrastructure Development and Housing, Julius Espat, spoke on the importance of the exercise. 

Julius Espat, Minister of Infrastructure Development and Housing: “Every project is categorized based on the technical aspect, it’s categorized based on the amount of money that the project is needed to work the project and so you have a prequalification process that you go through and in this case the pre qualification comes from the criteria set up by CDB and so you follow that criteria it tells you how many equipment the contractor has, what the experience, how many roads of similar magnitude have they done in the past and are they financially viable to be able to do the project. Once that analysis is done then a list comes out of the contractor’s that prequalify then they are allowed to bid on the project. If not you have anybody that says they’re a contractor that bid on a project they can never do. And s that’s what you do, you categorize. What we try to do is have more people registered at the ministry so that they can start on smaller projects and gain a better portfolio so that they can some day bid for a project of this type. It’s done internationally, it’s done locally and we follow the protocols that are established.”

This notice aims to attract contractors from various disciplines, including general contractors for commercial and residential buildings capable of executing site layouts