Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana has dismissed suggestions that new preferential procurement regulations, published on November 4, have scrapped black economic empowerment (BEE) and local content as evaluation criteria in public procurement.
Instead, he says the new regulations, which come into effect from January 16, have been published to ensure that organs of State, including government departments and State-owned enterprises, determine their own preferential procurement policies, as is required by law and confirmed in a February 2022 Constitutional Court judgment.
The court found that the Finance Minister had exceeded his powers by prescribing procurement rules to organs of State, which meant that the prevailing 2017 regulations under the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act (PPPFA) were in contravention with Section 217 of the Constitution.
Godongwana stressed that the new regulations did not represent a change in policy with regards to either BEE or local-content objectives and that government remained committed to both transformation and
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