With the Act signed and National Treasury's draft General Regulations out for comment, procuring institutions that wait for commencement day will start the new regime already behind.
The Public Procurement Act (Act 28 of 2024) was signed into law on 18 July 2024 and is being brought into operation in phases. In April 2026, National Treasury published the draft General Public Procurement Regulations for public comment — the clearest picture yet of what the new procurement regime will demand of every procuring institution.
The Act consolidates a fragmented landscape — the PPPFA, parts of the PFMA and MFMA SCM frameworks and a thicket of instruction notes — into a single procurement law for all organs of state. The draft General Regulations flesh it out: institutions will be required to develop strategic procurement plans aligned to their objectives and the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework, operate formal bid committee systems, subject major projects to independent gateway reviews, and publish procurement information on official websites and central online portals.
For years, strategic sourcing and category management were hallmarks of mature procurement functions. Under the new framework, strategic procurement planning becomes an obligation. That demands capabilities many SCM units do not yet have: reliable spend data and the analytics to segment it, market knowledge to build category strategies, and demand planning that connects procurement to the budget cycle. Institutions should be building these muscles now — they take longer to develop than a policy takes to write.
First, run a readiness assessment: map current SCM policies, delegations, committee structures and systems against the Act and draft Regulations, and identify the gaps. Second, fix your data — strategic procurement plans are only as good as the spend analysis beneath them. Third, capacitate the SCM unit: the new regime raises the skills bar for practitioners and bid committee members alike. Fourth, plan the transition: the current framework, including the Preferential Procurement Regulations of 2022, continues to apply until the Act commences — institutions must run compliant procurement under today's rules while preparing for tomorrow's.
The draft Regulations were published for consultation for a reason. Institutions that analyse the practical implications for their own operations — and say so through the comment process — will both shape the final rules and understand them long before their peers.
Nakede provides Public Procurement Act readiness assessments, strategic sourcing and category management support, and SCM capacitation across government. Talk to us about where your institution stands.
Our specialists work on these challenges every day. We would welcome the conversation.
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