Fourth ICT charter draft released

Johannesburg, 26 Aug 2004

The fourth draft of the empowerment charter for the ICT industry has been released, featuring significant changes from the third working draft.

While the third draft was intended to be the last, strong reaction from various stakeholders resulted in more talks and a revision of the draft. Among the major issues that had to be resolved were whether ownership equity provisions should apply in the same way to multinationals as to local companies, and the scorecard to be used.

Describing the negotiations with multinational companies via the American Chamber of Commerce as "robust", Charter Working Group chairman Dali Mpofu says a negotiated solution was found and he hopes the draft addresses those issues.

He notes that the target ranges released in May have been moderated in the fourth draft, in line with some of the submissions received and "vigorous debate within our task team".

The weightings for the ownership indicator have been lowered from 20% to 15%, with the five percentage points difference now distributed to increase the Department of Trade and Industry`s scorecard weightings for preferential procurement (2%), enterprise development (2%) and access to ICT (1%).

In relation to the third draft, the weighting for enterprise development has been increased from 7% to 12%.

Mpofu says in his note on the document that talks will continue on some of the issues, including special treatment of state-owned enterprises and small and medium businesses.

Talks between the working group and the government are also progressing "well" and include input by the Independent Communications Authority of SA.

"Some of these talks, especially around the composition and nominations of, as well as appointments to, the ICT BEE council, may proceed well into the five-month period between 30 September 2004 and commencement date of the charter - 1 March 2005," Mpofu says.

Comments on the draft may be submitted before 15 September, after which the final document will be handed over to cabinet via communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri on 30 September.

The fourth draft has been published on the ICT charter Web site.