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SITA will do more for SMMEs


Durban, 13 Sep 2011

The State IT Agency (SITA) admits it needs to do more to contribute to local development.

The Black IT Forum (BITF) previously called for all government departments, and especially SITA, to do better verifications of companies before doing business with them.

It also said SITA must be stricter with its tender procurement process so as to ensure BEE compliance of a company before awarding it a tender.

Do more

SITA CEO Blake Mosley-Lefatola told ITWeb that in the agency's interactions with the BITF, the forum indicated that SMMEs are not being empowered as they should be in relation to procurement spend by SITA.

“It's a comment that was made in more than one of the provinces. They've been complaining that SITA's procurement spend does not contribute towards local economic development.”

The forum also said SITA's procurement spend does not help SMMEs within localities to grow.

“We looked at the nature of the complaints they were raising and we agreed.”

He said SITA saw that maybe there was a bit more it could be doing in relation to empowering SMMEs.

SMME spend

“Hence, there's been the development of an SMME strategy that we should be rolling out during the course of this year where we want to empower SMMEs to grow.”

The CEO said some of the levers SITA is putting in relate to setting aside a particular percentage of procurement spend, between 10% and 20%, for SMMEs.

The agency is also looking at early payment for SMMEs and at issues of training for SMMEs.

“It's only now that the strategy has been finalised and that strategy would need to be disseminated widely to the different SMME forums that we've got.”

Once the strategy is implemented, there will be lessons that arise and will help SITA see what it needs to reform and change, noted Mosley-Lefatola.

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