Cape Town - More than 92.7% of the City of Cape Town's purchase orders during the financial year ending June 2017 were placed with BBBEE-compliant vendors, the city said on Sunday.
"As part of our drive to create a city in which previously disadvantaged residents are afforded economic opportunities, the City of Cape Town issued a total of 216,865 purchase orders in the financial year ending June 2017 (i.e, about 1000 purchase orders per working day) to vendors who were compliant with broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE) legislation," mayoral committee member for finance Johan van der Merwe said.
"This equates to more than R13.6 billion or 92.7% of our total purchase orders issued for this period. This is up from R10.77 billion or 87% of total purchase orders in the 2013/14 financial year," he said.
The number of BBBEE service providers who conducted business with the city over the same period was 2754. This equated to 87.4% of the overall number of service providers used.
"Our supply chain management department is committed to ensuring a sound, sustainable, and accountable supply chain process that promotes black economic empowerment and local economic development, and encourages small businesses and joint venture partnerships," Van der Merwe said.
Compliance was enforced via a rigorous tender evaluation and award process. The city’s bid adjudication committee meetings were also open to the public and therefore highly transparent.
"Broad economic empowerment is aimed at including everyone in economic development, not only an elite few. This is vital if we are going to sustainably transform our local and national economy. As an opportunity city, which focuses strongly on economic inclusion, we will continue to place a strong focus on transformation through including local suppliers who are BBBEE-compliant, and also through emphasis on the inclusion of local content in our supply chain. In many ways, this approach contributes to the city achieving some of the best service delivery figures in the country.
"Furthermore, supply chain processes can potentially make contracts inaccessible for small and inexperienced service providers, but our results show the department has managed to avoid this. The fact that this has been accomplished without compromising our clean audits is a big achievement," Van der Merwe said.