Enterprise and supplier development as well as legislative requirements of Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) will form key elements of the B-BBEE Commission’s upcoming national conference.
“We will be focussing on enterprise and supplier development and linking it to the challenges that we have picked up in all the provincial conferences. We will also unpack the B-BBEE legislative requirements for enterprise and supplier development,” said Senior Manager of Compliance at the Commission Lindiwe Madonsela.
Mandosela made these remarks at the Gauteng provincial B-BBEE Conference in Meyerton on Friday.
Friday’s conference was a build-up to the annual conference that will be hosted in Durban on 13 March 2020.
The Gauteng leg of the conference was part of a series of provincial conferences that the B-BBEE Commission has been hosting since May last year.
The conferences were held as part of efforts to educate citizens about the role of the Commission, the services it offers and to also understand the challenges that have been identified through engagements with various stakeholders.
Representatives of different entities including the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC), the South African Revenue Services (SARS), the National Treasury, and the National Empowerment Fund (NEF) also attended the conference to give advice to small business.
“Today we emphasised the importance of adherence to corporate governance by small and medium-sized enterprises and the role that the CIPC plays. We also taught them about the importance of tax compliance.
“There was also better understanding about the role of the B-BBEE Commission. We made sure that entrepreneurs understand the distinction between a policy-maker and the regulator and the other different players that you find within the B-BBEE space,” said Madonsela.
She pointed out the need for dedicated programmes that target small and medium sized businesses.
“It is clear that even though we may have all these institutions we will still need to have specific dedicated programmes that target small and medium sized businesses in providing opportunities to access to the economy,” she said.
The B-BBEE Commission is an entity of the Department of Trade and Industry (dti). - SAnews.gov.za
