The Purchasing Consortium of Southern Africa (PURCO SA) has presented a cheque to Unisa to the value of R897 537. This is part of PURCO SA’s commitment to give back to its university business partners a rebate amount based on the procurement actions they facilitated for and on behalf of the institution.
Pictured at the cheque handover: Chris Liebenberg (Chairman: PURCO SA), Willem du Plessis (Executive Director: Finance, Unisa), Prof Mandla Makhanya (Principal and Vice-Chancellor, Unisa) and Selvan Govender (CEO: PURCO SA).
This value is the back-end savings given back in cash, in addition to the front-end savings at the time of purchasing through the PURCO SA negotiated contracts. “The cheque could not come at a better time, as there is a big drive within Unisa to strengthen our partnerships with our stakeholders to enable our efforts in assisting us to deliver a quality and cost-effective education to all our students,” said an appreciative Prof Mandla Makhanya, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Unisa.
“Unisa is amongst the top three university participants in the PURCO SA contracts and is committed to be part of such collaborations to aid the higher education sector as a whole. Of note is that whatever savings are generated will eventually benefit our students in some way. Therefore, especially in this critical time in our sector, Unisa’s increase in its participation and support to PURCO SA, may assist in contributing towards a third stream income,” explained Eschèll Boshoff, Acting Director of Expenditure Management at Unisa.
PURCO SA is a Section 21 Company (company without financial gain) and its profits and assets belong to its member institutions. The surplus which is distributed to its members is as a result of the income derived through the international best practice model of collaborative purchasing, i.e. aggregate purchasing and volume rebates.
The aim of the consortium since the beginning has been to focus its efforts on cooperative purchasing, to identify items and services that are used by all of its members, and to negotiate better prices. Their achievements are not only to make products and services more affordable to its members, but it has a major benefit and spin off by making education more affordable to students.
Continuous collaboration between PURCO SA and its members ensures financial benefits, exchanging of ideas, procurement methods and principles, technology advancements, best practices and strengthening partnerships of good cooperation and good governance. “PURCO SA has evolved over the years since 1978, and in doing so added the ISO 9001:2008 quality accreditation, technology studies and recommendations to the membership on e-procurement and e-travel, training and development for member procurement personnel, supplier development and training and SCM consultancy,” added Selvan Govender, CEO of PURCO SA.
*Compiled by Kirosha Naicker
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