The Central Supplier Database (CSD) is National Treasury's single register of suppliers to South African government. If your CSD registration is missing, expired, or incomplete, you will be disqualified from a tender before your bid is even evaluated on merit — regardless of price or technical score.
When you register on the CSD, National Treasury automatically verifies your company against SARS (tax compliance), CIPC (company registration status), and the National Treasury database of restricted suppliers. This is why CSD registration is treated as a single, authoritative compliance check by procuring departments — it already bundles several other checks together.
Registration happens directly on the CSD portal (www.csd.gov.za) and is free. You will need your company registration number, tax reference number, banking details, and B-BBEE certificate or sworn affidavit.
It is rarely the registration itself — it is that the registration has gone stale. A CSD profile with an expired tax compliance status, an outdated B-BBEE certificate, or banking details that no longer match your CIPC record will fail automated verification even though the supplier believes they are "registered." Tenders are commonly lost not because a business never registered, but because nobody noticed the registration had quietly expired.
Check your own tender qualification