The aims of the South African Government's Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BB-BEE) policies are laudable, as is the focus on creating employment by providing supporting structures to encourage the development of Small, Micro and Medium Enterprises (SMME). Both policies aim to address the social imbalances in the country and create employment.� But are there some contradictions - or have I just misunderstood things?

QuarteX technologies is currently classified as an Exempt Micro Enterprise by virtue of the fact that we have been going for less than a year. This means that we are classified as a level 4 contributor to BEE and are 100% compliant. This will change in a few months and we will either still be exempt (by having a turnover less than R5 Million) or be a Qualifying Small Enterprise (QSE) since our turnover in the first year is unlikely to be more than R35 million!. In the latter case, we will be able to maintain our status as a 100 % compliant organisation since in order to do so we will only need to score points of any four of the seven categories (Ownership, Management, Employment Equity, Skills Development, Procurement, Enterprise Development and Socio-Economic Development) that make up the scorecard for a QSE. That is to say, that by then, we will probably not have a BEE partner in the company (although we have plans to do so) but even without that partner, we would achieve compliant status.� Why is this important?

There are many lucrative opportunities in local and provincial government for a spatially and technically inclined company such as ours. However, in order for us to tender in that regard, we need to meet the conditions of the Supply Chain Management (SCM) sections of the Municipal Financial Management Act (MFMA). This effectively means that we need to fulfil criteria laid out in the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act (PPPF) whereby tenders are evaluated on an 80:20 or 90:10 basis depending on the value of the tender.� In practice, this means the the 20 or 10 percent is exclusively based on the equity ownership of the bidder.� To make matters worse, in the private sector, some companies institute their own procurement policies which do not appear to take cognisance of the BEE codes of conduct for Exempt or Qualifying Small Enterprises and insist on equity ownership and employment equity scores which go well beyond the codes of conduct. As a small company, Quartex technologies is not in a position to meet these criteria and is again excluded through the zealotry of these companies .

I do not have a complete grasp of the relevant law, but it appears to me that the acts mentioned need to be re-aligned so that the objectives of employment equity, reduced unemployment and promotion of SMMEs are addressed and the criteria under which procurement decisions are made is consistent. Until that time comes, we will continue to be on the look out for our BEE partner!