Between January and December 2020, the City’s Strategic Business Partners (SBPs) collectively facilitated R11,27 billion worth of investment, created 7 631 new jobs and trained 2 932 people.
The City of Cape Town focuses on attracting investment in high-growth sectors, which creates jobs and leads to economic expansion.
To help in this pursuit, the City partners with and provides funding to Strategic Business Partners (SBP) in high-growth sectors like Business Process outsourcing, call centres, the green economy, craft and design and boat building, to name a few, all of which are poised for significant growth.
‘I am pleased by the efforts to create jobs and attract investment in our City, despite the challenges of COVID-19 on the country’s economy, livelihoods and health. These successes are an indication of the confidence that international companies and countries continue to have in Cape Town in terms of creating an environment that is conducive to job creation. We offer many things to the potential investor through reliable infrastructure, a focus on good governance, an appealing exchange rate and a great location for a work-life balance. I am confident that we can continue to recover and rebuild following the impact of COVID-19 on employment,’ said Executive Mayor Dan Plato.
The City’s SBPs include the Craft and Design Institute, Cape Town Fashion Council, Cape Clothing and Textile Cluster, the Cape IT Initiative, Wesgro, CapeBPO, Clotex, Cape Town Tourism, GreenCape and BlueCape. Most of these partner organisations are linked to industry sectors in which there is impressive potential for growth.
‘At the beginning of the pandemic, along with the City’s Enterprise and Investment Department, reviewed our Strategic Business Partners business implementation plans in a bid to repurpose how they spent their funding to better assist businesses get through the lockdowns and to adapt to the next normal.
‘We have numerous exciting programmes which focus on skills training because we often hear from interactions with businesses how they struggle to source the talent and skills that they need to sustain and grow their businesses. Through our workforce development programme, called Jobs Connect, we create a better link between demand and supply of people seeking employment. The Cape Skills and Employment Accelerator Project creates skills pipelines for high growth sectors and provides trained and work ready employees.
‘Cape Town has a very strong investment ecosystem precisely because our SBPs attract investors. The Investment Facilitation Unit within the City’s Enterprise and Investment Department in turn makes sure that they have a smooth landing in the City. We do this by offering a suite of financial and non-financial incentives, as well as investment facilitation services as part of our commitment to growing the Cape Town economy for the benefit of all.
‘Recently, we assisted the PayGas company with access to a non-financial incentive in the form of fast-tracking building plan approvals so that they could launch gas refilling stations in Nyanga and Philippi to give residents access to affordable basic energy. We are immensely proud that this Unit also helped the world’s largest pharma-tech company – Roche – to expand their operations here in Cape Town. In August last year, we landed the largest capital investment in South Africa since 1994 by Amazon Web Services in Cape Town.
‘These impressive numbers speak for themselves. I am very proud of the achievements of our SBPs and this goes to show that by working together, listening to the needs of businesses and ensuring that we implement plans that are proven to work, we will get our local economy back on track,’ said Alderman Vos.
