Wesgro recently hosted a stakeholder engagement to set out the steps Cape Town and the Western Cape are taking to maintain investor confidence following the recent credit ratings downgrades.
It was led by City of Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille and Western Cape Economic Opportunities Minister Alan Winde, and featured key insights and strategies from Wesgro and Accelerate Cape Town.
The emphasis is on:
1. An aligned communications plan across the Western Cape to counter negative perceptions about investing the region.
2. Building Cape Town’s brand as a world-class investment destination, through the City of Cape Town’s ‘Invest Cape Town’ initiative.
3. More than 70 tourism, trade and investment promotion missions abroad to be conducted by Wesgro in 2017 – selling the region as an investment destination, and helping local businesses access international markets.
4. Doubling-down on Project Khulisa, the Western Cape Government’s economic strategy, to ensure policy certainty.
5. Launch a new Investor Centre, in conjunction with the DTI’s InvestSA initiative, as a collaborative one-stop shop for investors into Cape Town and the Western Cape.
“Cape Town will continue attracting investment by creating an enabling environment for job creation and economic growth. We will do this through investing R6.8 billion in the next year on infrastructure development through road upgrades, electricity projects and expanding our broadband roll out amongst others. Key to this work is a strong, sustained focus on clean, corruption-free governance as these are the primary factors which investors consider when choosing where to invest their money.”
The Auditor-General announced that Cape Town was the only municipality in the country to achieve a clean audit for the 2015/16 financial year.
“Economic growth is at the top of my agenda and we will work relentlessly to ensure that we do what we can to grow the economy and contribute towards job creation for the people of our great city. Through our Invest Cape Town brand initiative we are actively promoting Cape Town internationally as a forward-looking, globally competitive business city. We are going to the world to say we are more than just an iconic tourist city, we are open for business,” said Mayor De Lille.
