Brown not leaving – Treasury

5th April 2016

By: Natasha Odendaal

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

  

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National Treasury chief procurement officer Kenneth Brown was not leaving his post at the end of June, the National Treasury said this week in response to media reports to the contrary.

In a statement to clarify the issue, the Treasury said that, despite being approached by the private sector, Brown would stay on to lead initiatives undertaken by the Office of the Chief Procurement Officer (OCPO) to curb corruption and pursue spending efficiencies within government.

“Under Brown’s leadership, the OCPO has made tremendous progress on these objectives to ensure that South Africa’s procurement system is one that is transparent and enables government to realise value for money,” the department said in a statement.

Brown, who joined Treasury in 1998, was tasked in 2013 with building the capacity of the then newly established unit and to modernise and oversee the public procurement system to ensure the procurement of goods, services and construction works was done in a fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost-effective manner.

Government spent some R500-billion on goods and services each year through over 1 000 procuring entities and Brown was required to put in place systems that would curb leakage in public expenditure and ensure government realised maximum value.

Under his watch, the unit had been reviewing contracts above R10-million across government to ensure value for money and to reduce waste and irregularities in procurement.

During the 2016/17 financial year, the OCPO planned to explore potential savings through negotiations with the top 100 suppliers to government, started with the travel suppliers to government implementing a mandatory travel policy on April 1.

This would be followed by suppliers to government within the construction and information and communication technology sectors and of leases.

“This approach is expected to result in close to R25-billion savings over the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework,” Treasury explained at the time.

Further, April 1 also marked the mandatory participation of government for existing and new transversal contracts that would see all common goods bought by government procured collectively, which would realise better buying power.

The OCPO also introduced the central supplier database in September to reduce the administrative burden on both the supplier and the administrator.

The system was mandatory for all suppliers to national and provincial government and entities within these two spheres of government and would be rolled out to local government from July.

Further, the OCPO led the compulsory implementation of the eTenders portal, effective April 1, which would save government R400-million a year in advertising costs, with running costs of R16 000 a month.

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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