South Africa to Encourage Employee Ownership More

South Africa's current Black Economic Empowerment program provides favored government contracting to companies that meet rules for expanding ownership to blacks. The program has been criticized as too easily favoring political favorites or people who already have substantial wealth because it does not emphasize broad distribution of wealth but only that one or more blacks own a sufficient stake in the company. Under new rules, the point system for awarding contracts will be changed to put more emphasis on broad-based employee ownership plans. Because so many businesses deal with the government in one way or another, the program has broad reach in the South African economy.