A national register meant to stop suppliers found guilty of criminal offences from doing business with the government has no names on it, according to a report by Corruption Watch.

Organs of state are, by law, prohibited from awarding contracts to companies on the Register for Tender Defaulters, which was created by The Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act.

But in a new study on government procurement, the anti-corruption lobby group found the national register is empty, says a Fin24 report.

While the publicly available register is supposed to list all companies found guilty of procurement offences in court, clicking on a link brings up a PDF saying: ‘Currently there are no tender defaulters.’

Professor Geo Quinot, of Stellenbosch University's Department of Public Law, who contributed to the report, said the absence of any names on the list was ‘very surprising’ considering ‘well-documented' procurement corruption in SA.

Corruption Watch also looked at the use of a second ‘debarment mechanism’, a list called the Database for Restricted Suppliers.

While the Register for Tender Defaulters lists companies found guilty in court, any organ of state from municipalities to national departments can submit names to the database without needing a court order.

Quinot said the database was meant to keep bad suppliers, who had not (yet) been convicted of a criminal offence, out of the public procurement market.

But of SA's eight metros, only the City of Cape Town has submitted names to be included on the list, which only has 138 names on it.

In addition, a number of large government departments have not submitted any names to be included.

Full Fin24 report