Question NW3357 to the Minister of Small Business Development
01 October 2015 - NW3357
Chance, Mr R to ask the Minister of Small Business Development
With reference to the call for nominations of candidates for the National Small Business Advisory Council, published in the Sunday Times on 23 August 2015, (a) why has it taken 15 months since the establishment of her department for the call for nominations to be published, (b) how many council members does she intend appointing, (c) what proportion of council members will be appointed from (i) government, (ii) business and (iii) civil society, (d) who will make up the adjudication panel tasked with making the appointments, (e) when will the appointments be announced and (f) what amount will each council member be paid in addition to their travelling and accommodation expenses?
Reply:
(a) The Minister needed to be familiar with the programmes that migrated from the Department of Trade and Industry (the dti) and to assess how these would be integrated to the new mandate prior to making any decisions. The Minister also had to interact with various stakeholders at national, provincial and local level to understand the needs of small businesses which will enable her to then appoint relevant people to Advisory Council.
(b) The National Small Business Act allows the Minister to appoint up to 18 Council members.
(c) At this stage, the breakdown of Council members has not been determined, however, the practice has been that a big representation of members is selected from the business community in particular individuals or business owners with experience of small business development.
(d) The panel will be made up of the Director-General and three senior officials from the department.
(e) The appointments will be announced as soon as all the processes of appointing the members are concluded.
(f) Council members shall be remunerated in line with fees stipulated for their designated level in the schedule of categories, sub-categories and official designations for officials who are not in full–time service of the state. The designated level for the National Small Business Advisory Council is Category A and Sub-category A1 as recommended by National Treasury. Remuneration for Sub-category A1 ranges between R3 232.00 per day and R4 344.00 per day depending on the designation for officials who are not in the full-time service of the state.