Africa-Press – South-Africa. The long-awaited Public Procurement Bill, which will set the parameters of how the competing goals of value-for-money, transformation, and local economic development will be balanced by state entities buying goods and services, has again been delayed, the National Treasury told Parliament on Tuesday.
The cause of the delay was last-minute changes made by the Cabinet before it approved the bill two weeks ago. Although the changes were not material, Acting Director-General Ismail Momoniat said that it was now necessary for the state law advisor to vet it again.
Responding to ANC MPs who expressed impatience that the bill had taken so much time to reach Parliament and was still not final, Momoniat said the delay would be at most four weeks.
The bill has been in the making since 2014, when Cabinet directed the Treasury to modernise and reform state procurement. A draft bill was approved in February 2020, revised in 2021 after public comments, and finally submitted to Nedlac for consultation in May 2022.
On 25 October 2022, Nedlac submitted its final report to the finance minister. It was finally approved, with modifications, on 10 May.
While the Public Procurement Bill aims to modernise and reform government procurement, MPs are most concerned about the chapter on preferential procurement, which aims to give effect to the Constitutional provision to provide preference to persons disadvantaged by unfair discrimination.
Preferential procurement has been successfully litigated against and a previous set of regulations set aside by the Constitutional Court.
The new bill envisages that the preferential procurement policies of state entities include the following:
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