Conversations about a waiver regarding nuclear aren’t peculiar

Friday, 21 April 2017: Eskom has noted the reports suggesting that it requested a waiver to the elements of the Standard Infrastructure Procurement and Delivery Manual (SIPDM). 

“Eskom can confirm that during the Eskom discussions with National Treasury’s Office of Chief Procurement Officer on 28th March this year Eskom raised the areas of the current National Treasury Regulations (under the PFMA and PPPFA) which might need to be waived for the proposed Nuclear New Build Procurement (NNBP) process,” says Chief Nuclear Office, Dave Nicholls.

These are related to the proposed evaluation criteria, which would include elements of localisation, the extension of the bid validity from 12 weeks to 2 years, the requirement for “self-designation” under DTI’s local content regulations as well as the SIPDM procurement gate 4 (which relates to budget and funding).

“The need for the waiver on the SIPDM gate 4 was to align the process with the Cabinet decision for the vendors’ responses to the Request for Proposals to form the basis of the funding model that had to be submitted to Cabinet by the Department of Energy (“End of Year Statement” by President Jacob Zuma on 15 December 2016). Therefore the finalisation of the budget and funding issues would not be possible prior to RFP issue,” Nicholls adds.

The other issue that was discussed was the review of the “feasibility study” that is a requirement of SIPDM. “The SIPDM came into force on the 1 July 2016, and predates the work done by Eskom on the feasibility of new nuclear power stations as well as the Gazetted IRP of 2010. There was discussion of the need to confirm that the work done to date met the objective criteria of the requirements of the SIPDM,” Nicholls adds.

“Eskom remains committed to conduct the NNBP in an open and transparent manner to the best interests of South Africa,” concludes Nicholls.

Statement issued by Eskom, 21 April 2017