More than 92.7 percent 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 (ie, 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 percent of our total purchase orders issued for this period. This is up from R10.77 billion or 87 percent 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 percent 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. (via African News Agency)
Gigaba Warns Of Wider Risk Of SAA Default
Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba on Friday voiced frustration at the slow pace at which South African Airways was taking steps to stem its financial losses and warned that defaulting on its debt payments could trigger a wider reaction from state-owned entities’ lenders.
Gigaba said one example was the fact that the technically-bankrupt carrier had yet to cut remaining loss-making routes.
“The delays in taking ourselves out of the Abuja-Johannesburg means we are losing millions of rands every month on that route,” he told Parliament’s standing committee on finance.
Gigaba said the company could save more than R1 billion every year simply by resolving issues with ticket sales, making cost savings in terms of staff incentives and stopping revenue leakages.
Dealing with these issues would be part of the conditions attached to the promised recapitalisation of the airline, the minister said, confirming that he would only make an announcement on further financial support for SAA in his medium-term budget policy statement in October.
Responding to a question from ANC MP and former tourism minister Derek Hanekom as to where National Treasury would find the money to inject into SAA, he said the state was mulling this.
Hanekom had stressed that the recapitalisation would mean that the sum eventually extended would no longer be available for service delivery, noting that if the figure were R2 billion, it could have been used to build 20,000 low-cost houses.
Gigaba responded: “It is not just announcing a once-off, we need to announce a plan for SAA so that we know, over the next three years this is what we will be giving SAA on an annual basis.
“But there is no way we are going to be giving SAA money for free… we are not going to babysit it and treat it like a child. They must demonstrate to South Africans that they are right to be giving them support. We will also release the conditionalities attached to the recapitalisation.”
The airline’s chief financial officer Phumza Nhantsi confirmed that it was operating on the assumption that it would receive a R13-billion recapitalisation in two tranches over the next three years.
SAA has to repay its lenders R6.9 billion in maturing debt in September, and a cash flow analysis released this week showed that the airline would be short of R936 million this month.
National Treasury recently gave the airline a R2.2 billion bailout when Standard Chartered Bank refused to further extend a maturing loan. (via African News Agency)
Free Online Academic Institution Launched
Riovic has launched Anzani Institute, a complete online academic institution where users can take advantage of various learning materials in a virtual classroom. The platform will distribute content focusing on topics that threaten jobs, such as artificial intelligence and cultivate innovative thinking in the South African labour force.
Users will be able to register free and lectures will be delivered through video on the platform. Users can take quizzes, tests and exams on the platform and a certificate of completion is generated, after every successful completion subjects. Everything can be done at the user’s pace.
“We would like to take the opportunities of education to as many people as we can by using technology. We believe in exhausting all of technology’s abilities to make life better,” says Phiwa Nkambule, co-founder of Riovic. (via Bizcommunity)
