JOHANNESBURG - The Black Business Council (BBC) on Friday said it was concerned about the low levels of compliance with the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act.
This follows the release of the B-BBEE Commission National Status and Trends Transformation Report for 2018, showing that 43 percent of JSE listed entities and 10 percent of organs of state submitted their reports as required, with the majority failing to comply.
JSE listed companies are required to report their B-BBEE compliance as per Section 13G of the B-BBEE Act and the JSE Listings Requirements in terms of the King IV Report on Corporate Governance, but only 43 percent of companies reported during the reporting period.
"This means that the private sector is not taking B-BBEE serious or is selective about which laws to obey and comply with and it seems that B-BBEE is certainly not one of those laws," said Kganki Matabane, BBC chief executive.
Matabane said what was even more worrying was that only 10 percent of all organs of state and public entities submitted reports while 90 percent did not bother to report.
Of those that reported 41 percent were either on B-BBEE status level 8 or non-compliant.
"This is very concerning to the BBC. We need the Auditor General to prioritise reporting non-compliance to the B-BBEE Act," she said.
"We expect government to set an example for the private sector and the general public in obeying laws. If government doesn’t comply with the laws of the land, who will? We also call on the B-BBEE Commission to start taking those who don't comply to court."