The Enterprise and Investment Department has partnered with The Business Associate for the next three years to provide support to suppliers who are registered on the City’s community vendors database. Additionally, newly registered vendors are also set to benefit from the training.

The one-day training programme has been developed in conjunction with the City’s Supply Chain Management (SCM) department, to ensure that it is well aligned with the specific requirements of the City’s tender processes.

The training empowers SMMEs on how to navigate the supply chain requirements of government. Titled ‘How to Tender: Doing Business with the City of Cape Town and Government,’ the training programme will help to ease the frustration of small business suppliers who want to do business with government, but find the process too onerous.

‘We often encourage individuals to become entrepreneurs and to venture into starting-up their own businesses. But navigating the SCM requirements and paper-work is simply quite daunting for a number of small vendors. Quite often they would rather abandon their efforts to respond to a government tender due to the complexities. The training will help to build their confidence in responding to Request for Quotations and Tenders that are issued by the City and other spheres of government,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Urban Management, Alderman Grant Twigg.

‘It is important for us to empower small business vendors with the knowledge and the skills needed to grow and develop their businesses into successful entities. These are the businesses who make an important contribution to creating employment for their community members and in doing so make a meaningful impact in our efforts to alleviate poverty and empower more people to become economically active. I am pleased that this training session ticks all the right boxes in terms of real empowerment of our small business suppliers and in doing so we are indeed building an opportunity city,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Opportunities and Asset Management, Alderman James Vos.

The programme will provide guidelines on how to improve their chances of winning RFQ’s and Tenders by simplifying how to navigate and read a RFQ/Tender Document, provide assistance to understand how RFQ’s and Tenders are evaluated and sharing information of favourable tender changes for Small Businesses.

Since May, the training programme has been rolled-out in 13 of the 24 subcouncils reaching a total of almost 168 vendors at the various workshops that are continuing in June. Of the 168 Vendors 112 (67%) are already City of Cape Town Registered Vendors, 36 (21%) are unknown and 29 (12%) are not yet registered vendors.