The BBBEE act allows industries to set up their own industry charters to use instead of the Codes of Good Practice. The act recognises that certain industries are sufficiently different to warrant a different scorecard.

Ther first industry to produce a charter was the mining industry. The financial services industry also decided that it was sufficiently different to warrant drawing up its own charter. Since then various industries have begun the process of drawing up charters. This includes the construction  indsutry,  the accounting profession, property, cosmetics, and latterly the legal profession.

Before a charter can be gazetted it must be approved by the trade and industry minister. This generally cannot happen until the draft codes are finalised.

Interestingly enough, the cosmetic industry decided that the draft codes were perfect for its purposes, and decided to abandon the charter and will follow the codes of good practice instead.

The accountants charter is so similar to the draft codes as to make almost no difference. The main  difference is the accounting proefssion has "partners" instead of "shareholders" and "directors".

We at EconoBEE believe that many of the charters will never be gazetted and the industry will end up choosing to follow the codes of good practice instead.