BEE codes unlikely to lift value of deals

According to Business Report, Colin Reddy, BusinessMap Foundation’s BEE research director, estimated BEE deals to be worth between R50bn and R60bn for 2006. ‘For BEE deals to increase, the volume of smaller transactions will have to increase significantly as many of the bigger deals have already been completed,’ said Reddy, who defined big deals as those worth R500m and above. He said BusinessMap was compiling final figures for 2006, which will be released in February. Peter Vundla, the chairman of the Presidential Black Business Working Group, said that the empowerment codes, which are meant to drive economic transformation, would become binding once they were gazetted by the end of this month. Full report in Business Report