Mining Charter and multinational suppliers – can anyone help me with this problem?

There is a little dilemma facing a client of mine who is a multinational and a supplier to Anglo. The BBSEE Charter has these targets for procurement

Description	Measure	Compliance Target by 2014
Procurement spent from BEE Entity	Capital Goods	40%
	Services	70%
	Consumable goods	50%
Multinational suppliers contribution to the social fund	Annual spend on procurement from multinational suppliers	0.5% of procurement value

The dilemma is this:

1. Does Anglo have a definition for multinationals?
2. The Charter is clear that multinationals who supply capital goods must contribute 0.5% of the procurement value to the social fund (which I assume would be Anglo's social fund). What happens with consumable or consumer goods that a multinational supplies? I can see a few possible options

 

• They are regarded as non-discretionary spend and therefore eliminated from the procurement calculation
• They are lumped in with capital goods and the multinational contributes that amount to the social fund as well.

And the real problem is that Anglo can't answer my questions and I've asked a few people in Anglo about this. What I have heard is that Anglo does not report on the multinational spend and they don't know what this social fund is – although my reading of the Mining Charter suggests that each mining house has their own social fund.

Harmony in their 2012 annual report have the following to say about both the social fund and multinational suppliers

with the definition of a multinational supplier now established, Harmony will negotiate participation with relevant suppliers and develop an appropriate system to track these commitments.

But they don't elaborate as to what this multinational is – so I suppose we can use any acceptable definition. A common feature in every definition is a company this is headquartered in one country with a subsidiary in at least one other country. The B-BBEE Codes of Good Practice define a multinational as a "Measured Entity with a business in the Republic of South Africa and elsewhere which maintains its international headquarters outside the Republic."

We know that the mining companies are putting more pressure on their suppliers to meet the definition of a BEE supplier – take a look at this Kumba letter from last September, but they do not make allowances for multinationals.

Is there anyone out there in the interland who can help me with this problem?