THE Department of Environment and Tourism (DEAT) aims to spend at least 58% of its procurement budget on Broad Based BEE enterprises by next year, says Sekwati Rakhoho, DEAT’s director: supply chain.
He says the DEAT will use BBBEE recognition levels in accordance with the Tourism Sector Code in future, the criteria of which will be finalised once the code is approved later this year. To be considered as a supplier to the DEAT, the private sector would, in future, need to submit a BEE verified certificate, he said.
This year, the DEAT’s preferential procurement target was already 58% but by September it had achieved only 38%, while last year it had exceeded its 50% target by 5%.
He said over the past two years, the DEAT spent at least R360m, 60% of which was spent on travel, accommodation and related services. The breakdown of travel-related spending was as follows:
| Year | Accommodation | Flights | Car Hire | Shuttles |
| 2007: | R14,1m | R3,46m | R5,6m | R2,7m |
| Sept 2008: | R10,4m | R1,2m | R1,2m | R826 000 |
Rakhoho said the DEAT applied Preferential Procurement Policy Framework (PPPF) and BBBEE policies when putting services out to tender. It gave a higher weighting to companies that focused on skills creation and transfer and that themselves procured from BEE compliant suppliers. Ownership remained a challenge because 60% of top management in tourism was still occupied by white people as opposed to 18% black people in top positions.
Other challenges included:
· Tourism suppliers that were not transformed e.g. conference suppliers.
· Limited empowered suppliers.
· SMME accommodation suppliers that were exempted from BEE.
· Most of Government departments still implemented narrow-based BEE and not BBBEE.
· Inconsistency across all Government spheres in the implementation of BBBEE.
· Fronting – accreditation was needed to eliminate this illegal practise.
Rakhoho said the DEAT recognised its buying power to transform and would use its influence to drive transformation in the tourism sector. It would increase its pool of empowered suppliers in sub-sectors such as travel agencies, car hire, accommodation and conferencing. TECSA was working on a database of bona fide BEE-compliant companies and fronting companies would be blacklisted.
