Empowermentsa is once again at the fore of South African enterprise development, in favour of both Black and White entrepreneurs. As the last offering for the year 2006, empowermentsa has presented ordinary SME investors opportunities worth over a quarter of a billion rands. “As we speak, we have standing orders worth over R15 million readily available to entrepreneurs, largely BEEs. No other private organization in the entire country has been this instrumental in developing local entrepreneurs”, says Mphuthi MPHUTHI, director of empowermentsa.

“Research has shown, over and over again, that the biggest cause of failures of many enterprises is limited and/or no access to markets. Therefore we are proud, as empowermentsa, to have been key to the unlocking of investment and procurement opportunities. These are fairly big markets that will benefit entrepreneurs. Currently, we are encouraging the formation of investment opportunities so that smaller investors can also be part of bigger projects which, under normal circumstances, would be both unaffordable and unattainable to them individually, adds Mphuthi.

“It is not by accident that Empowerment SA has encouraged investments in property. This is because all financial institutions want SMEs to have fixed assets as collateral. We, therefore, encourage our members to have property investments first.”

More impressive is the degree to which the figures are scrutinized by advisory team, which includes chartered accountants and lawyers for instance a shopping mall that was originally offered for R12 million was finally negotiated to R8.5 million.

It is expected that coupled with the fact that the National Empowerment Fund, NEF, is providing finance for such opportunities, these opportunities will be consumed a lot more speedily by local SMEs.

So far this year, empowermentsa has published over 8 000 tenders from both the private sector as well as the government, including parastatals. Together with its associates, empowermentsa has been equally effective in profiling SMEs that qualify with over 10 000 leading buyers who include the likes of Harmony, Xstrata Alloys, Freedom Park Trust, City of Joburg, BMW, Transnet, SITA, SAB, ABSA , Afrox , Anglo American, BHP Billiton, Bidvest, etc.