THE NATIONAL YOUTH CHAMBER OF BUSINESS

The National Youth Chamber of Business presentation prepared by the

Executive President for the public hearing on preferential Procurement

Policy Frame Work to be held on the 8th - 10th September -2003 @ Parliament.

We would like thank this opportunity we are given today to put forward are views and opinions on the Preferential Procurement Policy.

We believe that the policy need a fresh review and changes to adopt arid answers to the challenges face business development in the country as it because does not give the answers to the big problems.

The 80-20 and 90-10 approach focused on financial, rather than on technical skills and a lot of fronting has happen as result.

It is well known factor that financial service sector has not been transformed yet and HDI's has no accesses to finance.

So we recommend that the focus be change from financial to capability to delivery the project of each company. And in order to insure this we proposed new criteria with 70:30 this to address new entities that are largely owned by youth, and we need youth sector to be identified as HDI's and be allocated their deserving points on the Act.

Reasons:

Young people form more than 60% of the country's population

They suffer the most unemployment for them the sound alternative is entrepreneurship.

Most them they have no access to finance as they have no security

And mostly of time they have no experience, but skills and innovation.

1. Due to government bureaucracy system organizations who really have capabilities to deliver, face difficulties to get tenders and these end up in the hands of the same people time to time, end up manipulating the government systems.
  1. They are no proper outlined accountability and targets give to each sphere of government and we believe that there should be outlined further.
  2. There is no proper education and information given out to young people and people in rural areas as the documents are for and hard to access.

We would like to put several suggestions:

a) Firstly would like to see the government putting monitoring systems in place this can been done, by the formation body which should include all stakeholders and this will report direct to

b) Easy methods of accessing procurement on less valued tenders to new enterprise to help them sustain and more information be given out.

c) Exemption should be given to rural based companies accompanied by capacity- building.

d) Youth business development be prioritized on the Act as they form more than 50% of the population.

e) There should be measures taken to ensure that youth companies are funded in more rather than relying on Umsobuvu youth fund and Khula which haven't delivered what should have, and they should be exposed on sustainable projects.

We believe that promoting entrepreneurship among young people help in relieving and saving the government budget. And reduce number of unemployment and contribute in GDP of the country and on tax collection, which means the government, can spend more in social development programmes. By so saying we believe that if the present money is invested heavily on promoting entrepreneurship for better future development.

National Youth Chamber of Business