City’s Strategic Business Partners continue to deliver impressive investments, jobs and training

STATEMENT BY THE CITY’S MAYORAL COMMITTEE MEMBER FOR ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES AND ASSET MANAGEMENT, ALDERMAN JAMES VOS

Between April and June this year, the City of Cape Town’s Strategic Business Partners (SBPs) collectively secured R4,83 billion worth of investment, creating 1 930 jobs for residents and training 337 people. In the last financial year between July 2019 and June 2020, the City’s SBPs collectively secured R8,17 billion worth of investment, which resulted in 6 583 direct jobs for residents of Cape Town.

The R8,17 billion worth of investments, 6 583 direct jobs created and 2 137 people trained were achieved against the City internal targets of R5 billion worth of investment, 5 200 jobs and 3 500 training initiatives respectively.

To achieve these results, the City provides funding to and collaborates with SBPs. They are tasked with addressing developmental challenges but also to actively seek out opportunities to grow our economy by attracting investments.

The investments secured, the jobs created and the number of people trained over the last year by our SBPs shows that the City is getting a good return on investment in terms of our goals of economic growth that leads to new jobs.

At the beginning of the year, I had the pleasure of hosting a summit for all of the City’s SBPs where growth that diversifies our economy and creates jobs was top of the agenda.

I continue to engage with our SBPs to ensure funding is put towards initiatives that help our economy bounce back from the effects of the various levels of COVID-19 lockdown.

Our SBPs include:

• The Craft and Design Institute
• Cape Town Fashion Council
• Cape Clothing and Textile Cluster
• The Cape IT Initiative
• Wesgro
• CapeBPO, previously trading as Business Processing Enabling South Africa (BPESA- Western Cape)
• Clotex
• Cape Town Tourism
• GreenCape

Recently established BlueCape that is responsible for developing and promoting the boat building industry in Cape Town.

In Cape Town, our ability to focus on the catalytic sectors which drive demand and make business sense is what makes our business ecosystem a success compared with other cities. Most of these partner organisations are linked to industry sectors in which there is impressive potential for growth.

This is what making progress possible together is all about and it is our collaborations with industry stakeholders, our SBPs and other levels of government that make these successes possible.

As we grapple with the effects of the COVID-19 lockdown, the City will continue to focus on attracting investment that creates jobs, on supporting Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs), on facilitating skills development and training, and on ensuring business retention and expansion by taking advantage of the opportunities every crisis presents.