Under the B-BBEE Act, recent Amendments have been made to the Defense Sector Code and Chartered Accountancy (CA) Sector Code.

With Preferential Procurement forming a crucial part of the BEE scorecard, LFP Group’s Company Secretary and Compliance Manager, Shawn Swiegers says that Amendments to Sector Codes affect any business procuring from companies within these sectors. “Preferential Procurement makes up 23% of your overall BEE scorecard,”

“Regardless of whether its Generic Code or a Sector Code, companies should pay close attention to Amendments as these could affect your BEE scorecard” says Shawn.

Strategic decisions around procurement must be made in a bid to support compliant businesses and gain incentives from service providers. “Today it’s about making sound decisions that benefit like-minded businesses and the economy as a whole”.

Shawn highlights a few critical points to note under the amended Draft Chartered Accountancy (CA) Sector Code: “An additional requirement of 4% of NPAT or 0.5% of turnover is to be spent on specific bursary expenditure – this applies to both current and potential black employees. There are also two additional indicators for learnerships, apprenticeships and internships”.

When dealing with large enterprises, the Procurement allocation is lower than that of the Generic Codes and is included below:

All suppliers – 4 points

QSE suppliers – 1 point

EME suppliers – 2 points

51% 'Black’-owned suppliers – 6 points

30% 'Black’ Women-owned suppliers – 2 points

Shawn notes that the LFP Group now offers an Outsourced Procurement service to ensure that businesses are benefiting from the supplier agreements and can efficiently manage their procurement database.

“Our sophisticated software has been developed to efficiently manage and analyse your procurement data whilst reducing the need for manual administration” says Shawn.

“Pin point, track, plan and maximise the suppliers that your company makes use of. Strategically enhance your spend and bolster your recognition!”