The SOE Procurement Forum explained
It is common knowledge that State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) have tremendous clout in the procurement of goods and services in South Africa. Indeed collectively they represent billions of Rands spend in South Africa as well as in Africa itself. In the international market, SOEs are also big players when it comes to the acquisition of capital goods and direct procurement.
During a recent SmartProcurement interview with Fantas Mobu, Group Specialist: Procurement at the Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) and the Chairman of the State-Owned Enterprises Procurement Forum (SOEPF), it was mentioned that the founding members of this forum were procurement managers and executives from Denel, PetroSA, the SA Post Office, SITA and Telkom. These stakeholders are setting out to “establish a collaborative forum that will identify the various layers of potential synergy amongst its members. The SOEPF also serves to provide a meeting place where members can share information of mutual interest, such as the state and progress of Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE), supplier development programmes, and the latest developments in the world of e-procurement and e-sourcing”, Fantas Mobu told SmartProcurement.
This initiative is to be welcomed as it is a major step toward information exchange and knowledge sharing by a highly influential group of people in the world of public sector procurement. After all, networking with like-minded people and organisations is a fundamental cornerstone of today’s modern knowledge-economy.
