The 31st of January, 2010 has come..................and gone. And there are now 50 agencies that are going to end up accrediting say 500,000 companies etc. There is no way in hell that they are going to manage the load. Now what is going to happen to business as we know it? I can't see that it is going to be a pretty sight at all. The larger corporates are notoriously unreasonable - with MTN being about the worst. Oh yes, our reliable yellow cellular network operator is going to insist on only accredited verification certificates, just as they have up until now. Only now they have a legitimate reason to do so. And when subscribers like me can't get a signal then we'll know that MTN's network has come crashing to the ground because its procurement process has slowed down to such an extent it can't service its business.
And Nomonde is not even vaguely concerned that her whole BEE system cannot and will not cope. In fact, she praises herself and her department
Mesatywa added that the Department of Trade and Industry has made significant progress in refining, redesigning, and streamlining the accreditation process in order to ensure that measures to adequately capacitate the industry are in place, and these will be announced at regular intervals.
Is that so Nomonde? You might think these measures exist but I haven't seen them and no one I know has seen them either. What is going to happen when small businesses are put out of business because of MTN and Nestlé-like unreasonableness?
Mind you - I can't be sure that there were many alternatives for you. But be that as it may, the consequences are yours to bear.
Hi Paul, may I ask where those 500 000 companies were before the 1st February 2010 and why they have not been applying for a verification of their BEE status over the psat 3 years? Where is this load?
Please note again that my email address has changed, please could you change it on your system as I would hate to miss future blogs.
Kind regards
Brigitte
Posted by: Brigitte Brun | February 02, 2010 at 06:17 PM
Good question. Paul?
As an aside and a quite separate point: how about a little less pessimism Paul. BBBEE may not be what we need it to be but it isn't the catastrophe you seem to suggest it is. A few more helpful suggestions; a winning case study or two? Of course if you don't believe there are any......but then what are you doing in the field?
Posted by: Mark | February 02, 2010 at 06:34 PM
Thanks for the comments.
Mark - I appreciate your call for less pessimism and I'll try. To justify my pessimism would involve a litany of buts. I'll look for more positives in my posts from now on. And why I do this job - there are two reasons.
i) I believe that it can facilitate the necessary changes to see this country in the next 10 years. However I do not think that the people implementing and governing it are doing it the correct way. And most importantly - the one entity that should be making a difference - the government is doing very little to achieve this.
ii) I completely enjoy assisting my clients in making this system work for them.
Brigitte - my stats are a little old so I think I could be a bit off the mark (no pun at all) with 500k. The latest CIPRO stats (http://www.cipro.co.za//about_us/Web_Statistics_Version4.pdf) tell us that there are 1,854,704 active entities - ranging from CCs to co-ops. If one assumes that 70% are EMEs then the figure is 556,411 who must be QSEs and above. If 80% are EMEs then the figure is 370,941. Whatever the figure is, it is a far higher than anything any of the accredited verification agencies have ever had to deal with.
As far as who was doing them - it must have been unaccredited agencies, consultancies, legal firms, accounting firms, self assessments etc. With the PPPFA and scorecards becoming more of a reality these companies are going to have to start getting the necessary verification from companies like yourself.
Posted by: Paul Janisch | February 02, 2010 at 08:48 PM
Look forward to reading and interacting in the future. Thanks.
Posted by: Mark | February 04, 2010 at 06:30 PM