South African provincial tender boards are to be phased out as part of a wide-ranging revamp of the government’s supply-chain management, the National Treasury said on Friday.
Supply-chain management encompasses demand planning, procurement (including strategic sourcing), contract management, inventory/asset control and obsolescence/disposal planning.
To ensure uniformity in the application of the supply-chain process, the National Treasury is in the process of issuing practice notes, which deal with specific issues relating to supply-chain management.
The practice notes include, among others, standardised bidding documents, directives for the appointment of consultants and a code of conduct applicable to all supply-chain management practitioners.
This framework and the ensuing practice notes will be applicable to all national and provincial departments, constitutional institutions and public entities listed in Schedules 3A and 3C of the Public Finance Management Act, No 1 of 1999 (as amended by Act 29 of 1999) (PFMA).
The provincial treasuries are empowered to issue further practice notes to provincial departments and entities, which should not be in conflict with those issued by the National Treasury.
The promulgated amendment is in line with the intention of the PFMA, which empowers accounting officers to manage their departments and accept full responsibility and accountability for all expenditures incurred by their departments.
The promulgation of the above-mentioned regulations allows national departments an option to arrange their ad hoc tenders through the State Tender Board, or alternatively in terms of the PFMA. This “dual system” will be available to accounting officers at national level until such time that the State Tender Board Act is repealed.
At provincial level the various tender board acts will also be ultimately repealed and the various provincial tender boards will be dismantled. In some provinces this phased process has already started and certain provincial tender boards have already been dismantled.
Government expenditure rose by 17,5% year-on-year (y/y) to R24,922-billion after surging by 26,5% y/y in September to R26,895-billion.
The cumulative increase for expenditure for the first seven months of the 2003/4 fiscal year is 17,5% y/y compared with a revised budgeted increase for the full fiscal year of 13,7%. The February Budget had forecast a 14,4% increase. — I-Net Bridge