A report in Business Day Live states that the South African government is looking to loosen current procurement rules that disproportionately mandate price-based contract selection criteria at the expense of other contract award considerations:
KEY government departments are pushing for an agreement on how to extract the maximum economic and social benefits from the state’s R827bn budget.
The push may lead to a new policy that will allow for a relaxation of the government’s overwhelming bias towards price in evaluating tenders. The outcome, it is hoped, would create a policy that would allow the state to sidestep the restrictive limits on how it uses its spending power.
Further, it is hoped that the change in procurement policy would allow the state to create skilled jobs and manufacturing capacity in programmes such as locomotive manufacturing. The new policy, or regulatory amendment, would create exemptions from the 90:10 (price to socioeconomic ratio) of the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act and industrial outcomes.
