Every so often, we (my consulting practice) get an email request to quote on the supply of a service or an item of equipment for which we are agents. These requests vary from a simple email to a request-for-quotation (RFQ) document of some complexity.

The simple email requests can be categorised into two types. These are (a) a genuine enquiry and (b) a request for a price so that the enquiring party can give the work to somebody else (a friend) from whom they already have a (normally very high) price. In the case of (a), no problem and we proceed accordingly. In the case of (b), we can tell that the enquiry is just a box-ticking exercise, since the request is normally for a one-line email giving a price with a wildly unrealistic timeframe; typically, we are asked to submit a price by the following day. The temptation to rock the cradle of the enquiring party is huge – we could, for example, submit a one-line email which gave our price in Turkish lira subject to the Steel and Engineering Industry Federation of South Africa price adjustments. Very confusing. But we do not do this. It might backfire.

The RFQ documents are a different matter. These come from large industries, provincial administrations and government. These documents require us to submit a whole slew of ancillary documents, without which our price will not be considered. In no particular order, these are (at least) the following: letter of good standing from the Compensation Commissioner, broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE) certificate, tax clearance certificate, Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) registration document, Central Supplier Database number, company organogram. Further, we are often asked to fill out a long questionnaire in which we have to state if we have relatives who work for the State or the potential client and so on. All this seems as if it is designed to prevent nonqualified or no genuine suppliers from bidding. This may be true of some but, in point of fact, none of these measures will stop that from happening. The letter from the Compensation Commissioner need not be submitted – all you do is state “to follow” and write to the commissioner, offering to pay workmen’s compensation and get a letter. The BBBEE certificate you can get by making an affidavit. You buy a shelf company and, if it has not traded for more than a year, you can submit the CIPC document and a tax clearance certificate, since you would not have had any income returns until a year has elapsed. Thus, all these documents do is frighten off some bidders and provide empowerment to the nongenuine. Thus, having satisfied the bid requirements, all you have to do is now get the contract. One way to do this is to have the bid evaluator open the competing tenders and fill in an appropriate price. However, this is risky if one of the evaluators blows the whistle on you. You can deal with this only by bribing them in cash. Also, these days, there are two evaluators, so they both have to be bribed.

One thing that does stop corruption is that you have to be on the government central database. Either you have to know somebody on the inside to get you registered or any competent accountant can do this for you. The worst that can happen is that your price is not competitive and that a legitimate supplier offers a better price. If this happens, you do have to have somebody on the inside. This is not as difficult as it sounds; if your bribe is big enough, many people will be glad to help. Bribes of a couple of a million paid in cash are hard to resist and hard to track down.

The current system is deeply flawed. Back in the day, the considerations for any service or goods supplier were price, reputation, delivery and capacity. Now it is not like this and all suffer because of it.