The Advent of a Streamlined Procurement Process

By 6th February 2024Corporate & Commercial
streamlined procurement process

As of late the government has explored various avenues in an attempt to simplify and streamline the procurement process, as there has been well-founded critique directed towards the procurement process in South Africa. We have had our fair share of tender fraud, and unethical practices where it concerns government tender bids, evident of this has been the 30 billion rand which was lost to corruption within the public sector.

To highlight these avenues which the government has employed to streamline the procurement process, specific reference can be made to the implementation of the E-Tender Publication portal, as well as the Central Supplier Database (hereinafter referred to as the CSD) which is regulated by the National Treasury.

The rationale behind the E-Tender Publication portal is to centralize the procurement process, providing a one-stop destination for the publication of tender notices which are then accessible to the public, once perfected, this will result in tender advertisements which historically had to be published in Newspapers and the Government Gazette to become a memory of an archaic past.

The government has as mentioned also created and implemented the CSD, which seeks to be the primary source of consolidated and comprehensive supplier information for all government spheres, whether national, provincial or local. The implementation of the CSD negates the necessity for suppliers to register separately with different government entities as suppliers will now be required to only register with the CSD. The effect that this has is that it minimizes the risk that the information received from suppliers is duplicated or falsified, as the fact that suppliers were previously required to register independently with the separate government entities,  left the door open for discrepancies to creep in due to the plethora of registrations which were received. The primary focus of the CSD will be that once a supplier is registered it will facilitate the verification of the information supplied by the supplier, as the CSD is in tandem with the South African Revenue Services, as well as the Company and Intellectual Property Commission, and can therefore verify aspects such as tax clearance, company registration and B-BBEE status, which verifications will then be made accessible to all government entities alike. The effect of the aforesaid is that it has reduced the administration which was previously required when registering as a supplier for more than one government entity. As a consequence thereof time and costs have been saved. Furthermore, all suppliers who were previously separately registered on different government databases would have by now been automatically merged into the CSD.

The CSD has as of the 1st of April 2016 been utilized by the different spheres of government engaged in the tender process, as from such date, the government has been prohibited from awarding any bids to a supplier which is firstly not registered on the CSD and not verified on the CSD. Municipalities have now implemented usage of the CSD in totality as of the 1st of July 2016, and other government entities have followed suite.

These mechanisms indicate the government’s efforts to make the procurement process, transparent, ethical, cost-effective and efficient. One may further note that these mechanisms will bode well for our carbon footprint as we will be diverging from the usage of hard-copy products if the virtual realm can suffice. The implementation of the E-Tender Publication Portal and CSD is a step in the direction towards bringing uniformity to the Governmental Supply Chain Management System and aligning the processes fully with our technological era.

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