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Cape Town the top SA metro in Doing Business
3 October 2018
Globally, cities have fantastic stories to tell. And in South Africa, Cape Town’s story is about doing business, says Shirley Robinson, coordinator of the sub-national Doing Business & Urbanisation Review.
Speaking at the Doing Business in Cape Town Launch this week, Robinson said that Cape Town fared “extremely well” compared to other cities in the World Bank’s 2018 Doing Business in South Africa Report, the second in the sub-national series on South Africa, which analyzes business regulations for domestic small and medium enterprises in nine major cities, focusing on construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, enforcing contracts and trading across borders.
“I am very proud of Cape Town,” said Robinson. “At National Treasury, we constantly tell our colleagues in Johannesburg to look at what Cape Town is doing… In this report, Cape Town has attained fantastic results. Doing business in Cape Town is different to doing business anywhere else. Cities have fantastic stories to tell and it is important for peer learning. Everyone in Singapore know what their job is, they use Doing Business to sell their country. Everyone, including the cleaning lady knows that she helps tell the Singapore story by keeping the offices clean. Doing business helps cities tell their story. In South Africa, the Cape Town story is about Doing Business. We should be selling these fantastic results. They need to feature in the City Manager’s reports and in the Mayor’s State of the City reports and addresses.”
The World Bank Doing Business in South Africa report found Cape Town to be the best of all metros in getting electricity to investors and granting construction permits. The World Bank compared South Africa’s nine metros to 189 other economies across the world. Cape Town came out top of all metros in two of the World Bank’s four indicators.
“The city’s top ranking in terms of providing electricity puts Cape Town in the top 25% of city economies worldwide,” said Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille. “It takes 91 days to connect a customer, much quicker than Tshwane with 110 days and Johannesburg at 109 days. Cape Town also ranks first in dealing with construction permits. New businesses take 88 days to obtain all the necessary licences and permits, completing required notifications and inspections, nearly half to Johannesburg’s 155-day period.”
The World Bank’s findings follows the recent PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report naming Cape Town as the top ‘opportunity city’ in Africa. The report placed Cape Town 6th among middle-income cities – behind Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Moscow, Shanghai and Mexico City.
“These results are proof of the many efforts we have put in to building an opportunity city and I am pleased with the progress the City has made,” said De Lille.
The City of Cape Town set out a clear strategy to improve on the indicators that the World Bank was measuring and developed a checklist of things investors look at when deciding where to invest.
The checklist of key indicators that are top priorities for investors include:
- Reliable infrastructure. The City spends R6 billion on infrastructure annually
- Fast internet. To date we have installed 848 km of fibre optic cables
- Energy security. We have set a goal of sourcing up to 20% of Cape Town’s energy supply from renewable energy by 2020
- Clean governance that is reliable and transparent. During the past seven years the City has obtained four consecutive clean audits and three unqualified audit opinions
- Air Access. Our award-winning initiative is attracting more direct flights to Cape Town making it easier for investors and tourists to visit our city
- One-stop-shop for investors. In my office, Invest Cape Town cuts red tape making it seamless to do business
- A skilled and talented labour pool. Cape Town has four universities and a diverse labour pool
Professor Elias Links, an economist, former ambassador and professor extraordinaire at Stellenbosch University’s Business School, was the guest speaker at the launch. He spoke about the importance of the World Bank’s Doing Business study and congratulated the City of Cape Town on a job well done.
“I present Cape Town to the world at every opportunity. I love everything about this city,” said Links. “While we are happy with the results, we need to hold onto three things: the rule of law, respect for human rights and good governance.”
