Safcec lashes procure policies

Investors are confused

THE SA FORUM of Civil Engineering Contractors (Safcec) has called on the procurement office at National Treasury to develop comprehensible procurement standards for business.

Webster Mfebe, executive director of Safcec, said that he was concerned about the fragmentation of procurement standards in the country.

“I have concerns that there is a lack of policy alignment and therefore it affects policy certainty. The chief procurement officer should seek to standardise all procurement because it becomes difficult when each entity comes with its own standards,” he said.

The construction cluster sector codes and the scorecard that measures the entities, add to the confusion. “When certain state institutions start to have their own it becomes policy noise and confusion,” he continued.

Mfebe said the water boards, municipalities and various government departments and entities each have their own procurement requirements are a recipe for chaos. “It’s just chaos across the board,” he said, adding that given the confusion, it is difficult to believe that the different sectors are governed by the same national laws. “A foreign investor coming here would not know which policies to comply with; you would have to have a masters degree to understand the policy regime in our country,” he said. “Any serious investor would go to Botswana, Lesotho or Kenya where the ease of making business is highly commendable”.

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