26 Apr 2023

Following recent amendment of Section 76 of the new Public Procurement Act by Parliament, citizens belonging to joint venture businesses with foreign investors have been assured that the Act will not disadvantage them.

Section 76 stipulates that, ‘all works, services and supplies procurement shall be reserved for a citizen or citizen contractors.’ Public relations and education manager at Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA), Mr Charles Keikotlhae said their part function was to ensure implementation of a preference and reservation scheme by a procuring entity in respect to procurement that falls within the scope of the Public Procurement Act.

He said to this end, PPRA had issued guidelines to procuring entities on the implementation of the different existing reservation and preference schemes that were in existence. Furthermore, he said PPRA also issued standardised bidding documents incorporating different returnable forms that were to be completed by contractors participating in a tender. He added that such returnable forms were assessed as part of the evaluation process to ensure that contractors responding to a tender were compliant to any applicable reservation or preference scheme.

The above notwithstanding, Mr Keikotlhae said, it should be noted that Section 76(1) of the PP Act was not absolute and the law under Section 76(2) envisaged prescription of reservation schemes applied in different areas. He explained that accounting officers were therefore required to satisfy themselves that there were no citizen or 100 percent citizen owned contractors that were suitable and qualified to undertake procurement prior to engaging other contractors outside the scope of existing schemes/act. Mr Keikotlhae noted that the Act came into effect on April 14, 2022 and the authority was still engaging stakeholders, particularly procuring entities to ensure understanding and compliance to the new law. ENDS