Massmart achieves Level Five BBBEE rating

Massmart Holdings has achieved a Level Five Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) contributor status from ratings agency Empowerdex, following a comprehensive audit of the Group’s BBBEE performance.

This means that Massmart’s corporate customers can recognise 80% of the value of their purchases at the group’s wholesale and retail chains in the calculation of their own scorecards.

“We are extremely satisfied by this result, which was obtained with the participation of the majority of our top suppliers, who made their verified BBBEE certificates available to us. Just as their performance has helped our own scorecard, we can do the same for our corporate customers,” says Massmart CEO Grant Pattison.

“We have been lobbying our suppliers consistently to get them to focus on BBBEE and we are pleased that our persistence has been rewarded,” says Pattison.

“Empowerdex is proud to announce the BBBEE rating for Massmart. Attaining a level five contributor status is no mean feat for a company of this size with so many employees. It is a testament to their internal controls and social projects that they were able to attain such a score. Based on what we witnessed on-site, we are confident that they will be able to surpass the level five status” says Lerato Ramotsa MD of Empowerdex.

Massmart had set out to achieve the rating by June 2009, so it delivered on its commitment a year earlier than expected. The group aims to achieve a Level 4 contributor status by June 2011.