What is BBBEE?

Lets go to the very beginning of BEE compliance to get a better idea of what BEE really is.

The basics - background to BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) or more precisely BBBEE (Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment), is a government policy aimed at increasing black participation in SA business. BBBEE started its journey in 2003 with the Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment Act (the act was gazetted in January 2004). If you think about it, it is only a few years back, less time than the Cell Phone or even the iPod.

Before 2004, the concept and the idea existed, but we did not have any methodology for companies to measure and implement it.

The Department of Trade and Industry started work on the Codes of Good Practice. The Codes of Good Practice gave companies an idea of how to implement BEE objectively, by using a scorecard. The scorecard could be used to gauge the compliance level of a company. It does this by allowing companies to earn points by doing various business activities, which includes Skills Development and CSI (now Social Development).

Fast forward to Feb 2007. After three years of work on the Codes of Good Practice, listening to comments, many hours of analysis and hard work the Codes of Good Practice were gazetted on 9th February 2007 (gazette no. 29617). This for many was the start of BEE Compliance. The commonly talked about 10 year period actually started when the BEE codes were gazetted. The theory is BEE will have worked and will disappear in 10 years from Feb 07 (2017).

The scorecard

BBBEE (broad based black economic empowerment) as its name suggests is broad based. It effectively takes into account many aspects of your business to provide an objective measurement of your BEE status. It is not about doing a broad based BEE ownership deal, but rather meeting all the requirements simultaneously.

Within Broad based BEE you are able to score points in 7 separate elements (Ownership, Management, Employment Equity, Skills Development, Preferential Procurement, Enterprise Development and Socio-economic Development). Each element has been expanded upon slightly to take into account various sub categories, eg. skills development is fairly broad. You earn points for spending money on training courses and in-house training. Even learnerships can earn you BEE points.

The BEE Reports

The last step in the BEE journey is giving your scorecard to your customers.

BEE Courses - Reminder

The BEE Procurement and Enterprise Development overflow conference will be held on the 16th of October 2008 in Johannesburg.