Finance and Economic Opportunities
With regard to the release of the annual Procurement Disclosure Report:
- (a) What is the (i) number and (ii) details of companies that are not BBBEE compliant to whom contracts were awarded by the provincial government and (b) what are the (i) details of the contracts and (ii) amounts received by each;
- whether there are any contracts for COVID-19-related expenditure that are currently under investigation by the SIU; if so, (a) what are the relevant details, (b) what are the details of the contracts that are being investigated and (c) what progress has been made with these investigations;
- whether all the COVID-19-related expenditure of the province has been audited by the Auditor-General; if not, why not; if so, what are the relevant details?
- The Procurement Disclosure Report does not make reference to ‘non-compliant’ B-BBEE companies, however it does make reference to B-BBEE ‘non-contributors’. B-BBEE non-contributors refers to bidders who do not submit B-BBEE Status Level Verification Certificates or B-BBEE affidavits. In many instances these businesses are at least 51% black-owned businesses but were not able to formally verify that status at the time of bidding. While these bidders do not qualify for preference points for BBBEE only, they are not disqualified from the bidding process. They will score points out of 90 or 80 for price only and zero (0) points out of 10 or 20 for BBBEE. The bidder obtaining the highest total points will be awarded the contract. It must also be noted that in accordance with the section 217 of the Constitution and prevailing regulatory frameworks there is no mechanism to exclude non-contributing bidders from successfully competing for contracts
A total of 282 suppliers are non-contributors, making up 35,77% of the expenditure for COVID-19, of these 119 are at least 51% black-owned, the details of which are provided in annexure 1 attached.
2 (a) and (b) We would advise the member to direct this question to the Department of the Premier.
(c) We would advise the member to direct this question to the SIU.
3.The annual financial statements for the period 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021 were submitted to the Auditor General of South Africa (AGSA) on 31 May 2021 as required, this included all expenditure relating to COVID 19 in that period.
The AGSA has until 31 July 2021 to submit an opinion on the annual financial statements to each department and entity.
