a) The Public Procurement Act, 28 of 2024, recently assented by the President into an Act of Parliament makes it compulsory for procuring institutions to develop and implement procurement policies providing as below:
Setting-aside of bids for small enterprises owned by-
Prequalification criteria for preferential procurement
Application of the prequalification criteria for bids to promote preferences in the allocation of contracts to enterprises owned and managed by black people in terms of the applicable code of good practice on black economic empowerment issued in terms of s9 of the B-BBEE Act, 2003. Any bid that does not meet the stipulated prequalification criteria is an unacceptable bid and must be disqualified. This provision seeks to compel bid business to embrace transformation.
Compulsory subcontracting
Where feasible, compulsory subcontracting as a condition of the bid of the minimum percentage value of contracts to small enterprises owned by categories of persons mentioned in paragraph 2 herein above. A bidder that fails to meet any mandatory subcontracting criteria stipulated in the bid documents is an unacceptable bid and must be disqualified.
b) (i) and (ii) To ensure compliance with prequalification and subcontracting requirements, the central supplier database (CSD) has a functionality to search for suppliers based on the enterprise type (as defined in the B-BBEE Act, 2003) and per category of persons (as defined in the Public Procurement Act, 28 of 2024). This functionality has, however, been available to organs of state since 2017. Organs of state can identify and select small enterprise from the CSD for purposes of application and implementation of prequalification and subcontracting.