JSE listed companies have about 38 per cent representation by black people on their boards, with males accounting for 20 per cent and females 18 per cent, according to the report by the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Commission (B-BBEE Commission)
The report shows a decline in black ownership by 5.75 per cent and black female ownership by 1.96 per cent compared to the 2016 report.
Zodwa Ntuli, the commissioner, said, “To improve this, we call on government and the private sector to increase procurement from businesses that are at least 30 per cent black women-owned and to provide financial assistance, including through incentive schemes such as the black industrialist incentive programme of the dti.”
The B-BBEE Commission commissioned the study through DNA Economics in collaboration with Alternative Prosperity (Pty) Ltd, which analysed data submitted by JSE listed companies and B-BBEE certificate information captured by verification agencies on the B-BBEE Certificates Portal System that the B-BBEE Commission created in 2017. The study is part of the B-BBEE Commission’s mandate under section 13F (1) (g) of the B-BBEE Act and sought to analyse and determine the country’s present levels of economic transformation towards the achievement of the objectives of the B-BBEE Act in relation to black people owning, managing and controlling enterprises and productive assets of the economy.
The information analysed was for the 2017 calendar year (i.e. 2861 Portal information, 121 JSE listed entities and 4 State Owned Entities). Although required to submit compliance reports to the B-BBEE Commission in terms of section 13G of the B-BBEE Act, none of the organs of state and SETAs submitted their reports in the 2017 calendar year.
The property, tourism, agri-BEE and financial services did not achieve 25 per cent on ownership and on average entities failed to reach 50 per cent of targets on skills development, management control and enterprise and supplier development across all sectors. The number of companies achieving B-BBEE Level 4 and above has also declined compared to the 2016 report, with the report showing that 60 per cent of the entities fall between B-BBEE Level 5 and Non-Compliant B-BBEE Status, while the 2016 report had 60.09 per cent of entities achieving B-BBEE Level 4 and above. The 2017 report shows that about 40 per cent of entities achieved B-BBEE Level 4 and above, which is 20 per cent decline from the 2016 report.
“We expect the pace of transformation to improve going forward given the recorded 65 per cent increase in the requests for advice from the B-BBEE Commission in the 2017/2018 financial year, and also improvement in the submission of compliance reports after the JSE made B-BBEE reporting a listing requirement, which has helped improve the reporting in 2018 already,” Ntuli concluded.
