Customers get 135% recognition for procurement with tech leader
Tellumat, the leading empowered South African manufacturer, distributor and service provider in the high-tech defence and telecommunications arenas, has achieved sought-after Level 3 Black Economic Empowerment status in terms of the country’s Codes of Good Practice.
The news came with the company’s latest BEE rating by SANEVA, the South African National Empowerment Verification Agency, at the end of January 2010.
Tellumat’s financial director Graham Meyer says the improved rating affords Tellumat’s customers 110% recognition for their BEE procurement with Tellumat. “In addition, Tellumat qualifies as a ‘value-adding enterprise’, which gives our customers an additional 25% recognition of their expenditure with us. So in total our customers can claim 135% preferential procurement recognition, which is the same recognition afforded to a Level 1 enterprise not qualifying for the value adding element.”
The company boasts 32.3% black ownership, including 10.7% black women ownership, as well as advanced empowerment initiatives in all other areas of the BEE Codes. Tellumat has for more than two years held Level 4 status under the Codes.
Tellumat CEO Rasheed Hargey says the company wholeheartedly supports South Africa’s BEE measures, which are fundamentally transforming the country’s skewed ownership of the means of production.
He says Tellumat has contributed very well in all seven pillars of measurement – ownership, management control, employment equity, skills development, preferential procurement, enterprise development and corporate social investment.
“In the latter two, we attained perfect scores. Our main improvements compared to the previous scorecard have been in the areas of employment equity, skills development and preferential procurement.” he says. Going forward, the company will focus increasingly on the burning industry issue of skills development, notwithstanding Tellumat’s good performance in that area, and on incremental improvement in other areas of the Codes.
