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Assurance report

Independent Assurance Report to the directors of Blue Label Telecoms Limited

We have been engaged by the directors of Blue Label Telecoms Limited (“Blue Label” or the “Company”) to perform an independent limited assurance engagement in respect of Selected Sustainability Information reported in the Company’s Integrated Annual Report for the year ended 31 May 2013 (the “Report”). This report is produced in accordance with the terms of our contract with the Company dated  23  April  2013.

Independence and expertise

We have complied with the International Federation of Accountants’ (IFAC) Code of Ethics  for  Professional  Accountants,  which includes comprehensive independence and other requirements founded on fundamental principles of integrity, objectivity, and professional  competence  and  due  care, confidentiality and professional behaviour. Our engagement was conducted by a multi-disciplinary team of health, safety, environmental  and  assurance  specialists  with extensive experience in sustainability reporting.

Scope and subject matter

The following information in the Report was selected for an expression of limited assurance:

We refer to this information as the “Selected Sustainability Information”.

We have not carried out any work on data reported for prior reporting periods, nor have we performed work in respect of future projections and targets. We have not conducted any work outside of the agreed scope and therefore restrict our opinion to the Selected Sustainability Information.

Respective responsibilities of the directors and PricewaterhouseCoopers Inc.

The directors are responsible for the selection, preparation and presentation of the Selected Sustainability Information in accordance with the criteria set out in the Company’s internally defined procedures presented in the Glossary of Terms and Acronyms on page 262 of the Integrated Annual Report, collectively referred to as the “Reporting Criteria”. The directors are also responsible for designing, implementing and maintaining of internal controls as the directors determine is necessary to enable the preparation of the Selected Sustainability Information that are free from material misstatements, whether due to fraud or error.

Our responsibility is to form an independent conclusion, based  on  our limited  assurance procedures, on whether anything has come to our attention to indicate that Selected Sustainability Information has not been prepared, in all material respects, in accordance  with  the  Reporting  Criteria.

This report, including the conclusion, has been prepared solely for the directors of the Company as a body, to assist the directors in reporting on the Company’s sustainable development performance and activities. We permit the disclosure of this report within the Report for the year ended 31 May 2013, to enable the directors to demonstrate they have discharged their governance responsibilities by commissioning an independent assurance report in connection with the Report. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the directors as a body and the Company for our work or this report save where terms are expressly agreed and with our prior consent in writing.

Assurance work performed

We conducted our limited assurance engagement in accordance with International Standard  on  Assurance  Engagements  3000: Assurance Engagements other than Audits and Reviews of Historical Financial Information  (ISAE 3000) issued by the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board. This standard requires that we comply with ethical requirements and that we plan and perform the assurance engagement to obtain limited assurance on the Selected Sustainability Information as per the terms of our engagement.

Our work included examination, on a test basis, of evidence relevant to the Selected Sustainability Information. It also included an assessment  of  the  significant  estimates  and judgements made by the directors in the preparation of the Selected Sustainability Information. We planned and performed our work so as to obtain all the information and explanations that we considered necessary in order to provide us with sufficient evidence on which to base our conclusion in respect of the Selected  Sustainability  Information.

Our limited assurance procedures primarily comprised:

A limited assurance engagement is substantially less in scope than a reasonable assurance engagement under ISAE 3000. Consequently, the nature, timing and extent of procedures for gathering sufficient appropriate evidence are deliberately limited relative to a reasonable assurance engagement, and therefore less assurance is obtained with a limited assurance engagement than for a reasonable assurance engagement.

The procedures selected depend on our judgement, including the assessment of the  risk of material misstatement of the Selected Sustainability Information, whether due to fraud or  error.  In  making  those  risk  assessments,  we consider internal control relevant to the Company’s preparation of the Selected Sustainability Information in order to design procedures that are appropriate in the circumstances.

We believe that the evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our conclusion.

Inherent  limitations

Non-financial performance information is subject to more inherent limitations than financial  information,  given  the  characteristics of the subject matter and the methods used for determining, calculating, sampling and estimating such information. The absence of  a significant body of established practice on which to draw allows for the selection of different  but  acceptable  measurement techniques which can result in materially different  measurements  and  can  impact comparability. Qualitative interpretations of relevance, materiality and the accuracy of data are subject to individual assumptions and judgements. The precision of different measurement techniques may  also vary. Furthermore, the nature and methods used to determine such information, as well as the measurement criteria and the precision thereof, may change over time. It is important to read the Report in the context of the internally defined procedures set out in the Glossary of Terms and Acronyms presented on page 262 of the Report.

Conclusion

Based on the results of our limited assurance procedures performed, nothing has come to our attention that causes us to believe that the Selected Sustainability Information for the year ended 31 May 2013, has not been prepared, in all material respects, in accordance with the reporting criteria.

Other matters

The maintenance and integrity of Blue Label’s website is the responsibility of Blue Label’s directors. Our procedures did not involve consideration  of  these  matters  and,  accordingly, we accept no responsibility for any changes to either the information in the Report or our independent assurance report that may have occurred since the initial date of presentation on the website.

PricewaterhouseCoopers Inc.
Director: Wessie van der Westhuizen
Registered Auditor
Johannesburg
18 October 2013