The long-awaited South African draft Public Procurement Bill was published for public comment on 19 February 2020. One of the main aims of the draft statute is “to create a single regulatory framework for public procurement and eliminate fragmentation in laws which deal with procurement in the public sector”. The draft Bill proposes a range of reforms to the South African procurement system, including
- the creation of a Public Procurement Regulator,
- repealing the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act and with it the entire current approach to preferential procurement, replacing it with a new, broad preferential procurement framework to be determined by the Minister of Finance by way of regulation,
- introducing a new remedies regime that includes reconsideration at entity level, provincial level and national level, with a standstill period, and a new Public Procurement Tribunal, which will have to be approached for review of procurement decisions prior to instituting judicial review applications
- explicitly regulating infrastructure procurement and PPPs, and
- replacing the current local government procurement rules (the Bill proposes repealing the entire chapter 11 of the MFMA).
Comments are open until 30 June 2020.
Details on the draft Bill can be found on the website of National Treasury.
