BRIAN KANTOR: Messages from cyberspace and how to interpret them
Cyberspace has revealed the modus operandi of a group of South African businesses that have excelled (if that is the right term) at doing highly profitable business with the government. We now know just how shockingly profitable these highly favoured procurement exercises have been. The large modern state, that includes the state-owned business enterprises with genuine monopoly powers, has significant economic powers to contract for goods and services from private suppliers. Such contracts, it would surely be widely agreed, should be determined in an objective way, and be subject to genuine competition for such potentially valuable business opportunities. If this objectivity is not to be the guiding principle, the waste incurred is not only that of hard-won tax revenues or borrowing powers supported by the tax base; it also means a sacrifice of the alternative benefits that might have been better provided for — including funding spending on the least advantaged of society. That offi...
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