FRONTING, especially among tourism SMMEs, is a problem facing government departments when choosing service providers in terms of the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework (PPPF) and Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE). This emerged at the second annual Tourism BEE conference in Cape Town last week, where several speakers highlighted the problem of fronting – tokenism or superficial inclusion on company letterheads of historically disadvantaged individuals or obtaining BEE rewards through another BEE compliant company. Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism director; supply chain, Sekwati Rakhoho, said as a result of the problem the Tourism Empowerment Council of SA (TECSA) was now working on a database of bona fide BEE compliant companies and fronting companies would be blacklisted. SANParks gm: supply chain management, Portio Mosikare, said the problem was rife among SMMEs, but SANParks had cleaned up its SMME database to eliminate fronting.

Jeyrel Soobramanian, director: norms and standards at the National Treasury, said there was a fine line between fraudulently fronting as a BEE compliant company and acting as a broker for an empowered company.