TIME TO RETHINK OUR APPROACH TO B-BBEE? BY JAMES VAN DEN HEEVER
GENERIC There is a greater readiness to talk about the shortcomings of the generic scorecard and particularly how it is applied. Overall, the sense is that a more flexible approach is needed to achieve our transformation goals.
LEVEL 4 % of target achieved
Target
Generic
142,5
160,00
200,00
76,1
57,7
100,00
74,5
75,2
150,00
50,00
Black Ownership: Equity Ownership
Management and Control
Role players appear significantly more outspoken about what they see as the limitations of the current approach to broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) than last year. At the same time, though, nobody questions the urgent need for empowerment. The generic scorecard incorporates a range of sectors that don’t have their own codes including manufacturing, retail, education, chemicals & fertilisers, energy & water, food and beverages, R&D and textiles. Together, all these sectors combine to achieve B-BBEE recognition level 4 with an average of 87.75 contribution points. Looking at the scorecard elements, generic companies achieved 75.2% of the target for ownership; only 57.7% for management; 74.5% for skills development; 76.1% for ESD and 142.5% for socioeconomic development.
Skills Development
Enterprise and Supplier Development
SocioEconomic Development
SECTOR SCORECARDS GET THE THUMBS DOWN In last year’s Gauge report, we argued that a move towards sector-specific scorecards could be a way to introduce more flexibility into how the companies across all these disparate sectors implement, and are judged on, empowerment. This time round, the overwhelming consensus is that negotiating a sector-specific scorecard is not worth the aggravation. Michael Lawrence, executive director of the National Clothing Retail Federation of South Africa (NCRF), says a sector-specific scorecard would simply create a new bureaucracy: “I see no need for a retailspecific scorecard but I’m not happy with the generic one either,” he says. He argues that the scorecard doesn’t harmonise with the relevant legislation and has had too many tweaks - it’s essentially dysfunctional.
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