Only 16% of South Africa's public infrastructure tenders concluded in a year
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Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Dean Macpherson says only one in six public infrastructure tenders were concluded in the past 12 months, describing the rate as "simply not good enough" and warning that procurement failures risk paralysing the state.
Johannesburg - Only one in six public infrastructure tenders were concluded in the past 12 months, according to Infrastructure South Africa, a statistic Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Dean Macpherson cited in an address to an infrastructure delivery forum hosted by Cox Yeats Attorneys on Friday, 18 September.
"This is simply not good enough," Macpherson said, adding that the real bottleneck in infrastructure delivery was a severe shortage of projects that are bankable, technically prepared, legally implementable and properly structured.
The minister said the reasons only one in six tenders are concluded are multifaceted, but largely stem from internal issues within procuring departments and project sponsors, including state-owned enterprises. Some contracts were not in a suitable state to be considered for award because there was insufficient data to financially close them, while in other cases projects were allowed to "collapse" by their sponsors and were therefore not finalised or adjudicated within a specific timeframe.
Macpherson said some municipalities cannot get even the basics right when it comes to infrastructure procurement, a problem evident in both metros and smaller municipalities. "The real intervention that we should be considering is how do you either capacitate them to be able to put proper tender documents together - or do you externalise that to make sure that they can reach close?" he said, describing the situation as systemic and requiring urgent intervention beyond his department.
He pointed to a "Chinese wall" between procurement and execution, with supply chain management reluctant to take on the responsibility that comes with procurement, and said the situation risks paralysing the state. Master Builders South Africa executive director Roy Mnisi also highlighted several key challenges facing infrastructure delivery at the forum.
Saul Musker, director of strategy and delivery support in The Presidency, told the gathering that government is generally not very good at building things but is good at specifying outcomes, planning and determining what it wants. Macpherson said South Africa does not have a capital problem, pointing to significant liquidity among private financial markets, institutional investors and development finance institutions. Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana told the 2026 Master Builders South Africa Congress earlier in September that the challenge with infrastructure delivery is not a lack of funding but government's ability to consistently convert allocations into functioning infrastructure.