Finance MEC, on cloud nine
Asiphe Cokile
Gauteng Finance MEC, Barbara Creecy had reason to be excited. This follows her department becoming the first to roll out the adjudicating of the province’s banking tender in public.
The event took place at Legislature and was attended by all the stakeholders including representatives of the four competing major banks, members of the public and the finance portfolio committee.
The preferred bank was expected to manage the provincial’s R90-billion central banking service tender.
According to Creecy, This was an important step that will go a long way in restoring the public confidence. “I‘am extremely happy to reach this point.”
The MEC, also explained to the media that based on the lessons learned from these pilot projects, the Gauteng Treasury will develop a plan to rollout the open tender process across Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG).
“In line with the commitments made by the Premier David Makhura in the state of the Province Address, we are targeting to priorities projects above R50-million for the open tender adjudication in the current financial year. We believe this will go a long way towards restoring public confidence in the government procurement system,” she said.
Creecy further explained that after this thorough procedure, a recommendation, together with the report of an independent probity team, will now be forwarded to the Department’s head, Nomfundo Tshabalala for the final decision on awarding the contract.
“As part of their social responsibility, we expect the winning bidder to work with us in supporting the development of the Gauteng City Region. The successful bidder will also work with us to increase the financial literacy of our employees and invest in community programmes to improve the living conditions of our people,” Creecy said.
Did you know?
The winning bank would need to manage all the banking transactions including the payment of salaries of 200 000 officials and supplier payment of about R3-billion per month.
The winning bank needed to demonstrate competence to meet the complex corporate and commercial banking requirements of GPG. Including the following.
Complete centralized GPG portfolio consisting of about 232 bank accounts, about 151 petty cash books, eight trading accounts;
• Ability to handle very large transaction volumes, consisting of nearly R3-bllion salaries per month end.
• Efficient and cost effective current accounts administration.
• Ongoing electronic banking and systems training to support GPG officials in the effective management of such systems.
• Internal Controls that will prevent and detect any fraud to GPG.
• Appropriate skills training and development of GPG officials in all spheres of financial services as required by the GPG at no cost to the GPG.
• Processes to identify and deal with un-cleared/unidentified transactions reflected in both the exchequer and pay master general accounts to minimize the accumulation of un-cleared items.
