The US Chamber of Commerce and a group of multinationals will meet the ICT Empowerment Charter working group on Saturday and Sunday to thrash out the issue of equity ownership.
According to the third draft of the ICT black economic empowerment (BEE) charter, there will be no exclusions in any areas of the charter. Unless this changes before the final draft, multinationals that do not make BEE equity targets will not be able to be classified as BEE companies, regardless of what they do in areas such as procurement, skills development and management.
Dali Mpofu, chairman of the charter working group, says the working group wants to put the issue to bed, settling it once and for all.
"We have received over 30 late submissions since the official cut-off date on 30 May for final submissions to the process of formulating the charter. We will receive one or two more this week. After examining all the information and meeting with the multinationals on the weekend, we will then take a decision on Monday on whether we need more time to put the final draft together or whether it will still be released on 25 June," he says.
The working group accepted a proposal from the US Chamber of Commerce to mediate between the multinationals and the working group at the last indaba held at Vodaworld on 14 May.
The chamber was approached by the multinationals, who made the initial submission to the working group with an alternative proposal on the issue of equity ownership, to mediate on the issue. The group includes Microsoft, HP, Oracle, IBM, EDS, Intel, Cisco, Veritas and Dell.
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