Sanral chases tenders
INTENDS ADVERTISING ANOTHER 70 ‘IN THE NEXT COUPLE OF WEEKS’ Some among those cancelled because of court bid.
The South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) is aiming to have about R28 billion worth of tenders in the market by the end of its financial year in March this year.
The injection of these tenders into the economy will provide a welcome boost to South Africa’s struggling construction industry.
Sanral CEO Reginald Demana said the roads agency intends to put out at least another 70 tenders to the market “in the next couple of weeks”.
Demana said this will result in about R28 billion of tenders advertised under Sanral’s Interim Preferential Procurement Policy (PPP) in the current 2023/2024 financial year.
The announcement about the R28 billion in tenders to be advertised follows Sanral reporting in December that it had closed almost 77 tenders worth R6.43 billion and had started adjudicating these tenders with the aim of awarding them early in 2024.
These tenders were among those cancelled because of a high court legal challenge by several construction companies to Sanral’s new PPP scoring system, which it adopted in May 2023 and was to be used to adjudicate these tenders.
The legal challenge led to Sanral withdrawing the scoring system in October 2023, cancelling all existing advertised tenders
that had not yet closed and embarking on a public participation consultation process with interested and affected parties on a proposed interim PPP.
This resulted in Sanral readvertising 86 road construction tenders, collectively valued at R7.2 billion, at the end of November last year and indicating that its stated aim is to fast-track the adjudication of these tenders to get these projects back on track as speedily as possible.
Demana said earlier this month that Sanral is on a mission to accelerate work in the construction industry early in the first half of this year.
“There is quite a lot of work we want to dish out. By March, we want to have about R28 billion worth of tenders in the market. However, some will be closed towards April when we enter the new financial year,” he said.
Demana said the full rollout of the additional contracts Sanral will be issuing will include dividing the R28 billion across the entire country and into all provinces.
“We try and make sure that we are distributing work and tenders equitably so that we don’t leave any part of the country feeling that we are not looking after the national road network in their area,” he said.
The spread of work across Sanral’s four regions:
The Western Region, comprising the Western Cape and Northern Cape, will get contracts worth R600 million;
The Southern Region, which encompasses the Eastern Cape, will get contracts worth R2.8 billion;
The Eastern Region, which includes the Free State and Kwa
Zulu-Natal, will get contracts worth R2.1 billion; and
The Northern Region, comprising Gauteng, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West, will get contracts worth over R500 million.
Demana said the Eastern and Southern regions are allocated much bigger portions because they encompass significant infrastructure projects, such as the N2/ N3 expansion in KwaZulu-Natal.
Master Builders South Africa executive director Roy Mnisi said last week SA’s construction sector is “ailing” when expressing concern about delays with the multi-billion-rand redevelopment of six South African border posts because of an extension to the closing date for the submission of bids for these projects.
Mnisi said contractors should be allowed to complete jobs and move on to other jobs “to keep the industry going”.