City of Cape Town’s Business Partners created 7600 jobs despite lockdown 

After securing a reported R11.27-billion investment, the City of Cape Town has reported that its Strategic Business Partners created 7631 new jobs between the period of January to December in 2020. 

 COCT has created 7600 jobs and trained 2 932 people despite lockdown challenges

With a strong focus on attracting investment in high-growth sectors, to facilitate job creation and overall economic expansion, the City aims to partner and provide funding to Strategic Business Partners in various sectors such as Business Process outsourcing, call centres, the green economy, craft and design, and boat building and more. 

Dan Plato, Executive Mayor of the City of Cape Town comments on the impact of the investment secured by its various strategic business partners. 

”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.

According to reports, the City of Cape Town is committed to uplifting and improving the local economy. 

Some of the strategic partners of the City 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.

James Vos, Mayoral Committee Member Alderman explains that strategic business partners are chosen based on investment viability. 

“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.”

Investments made into various businesses are enabling access to a range of much-needed services for locals. 

“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. I was immensely proud that this Unit also helped the world’s largest pharma-tech company – Roche – to expand its 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,” comments Vos. 

Skill training

The City has implemented various programmes to facilitate skills training such as Jobs Connect, a workforce development progamme and the Cape Skills and Employment Accelerator Project that creates skills pipelines for high growth sectors and provides trained and work ready employees.

“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,” concludes Vos.

Read more: PayGas plans to install 52 Pay-as-you-gas stations in SA
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Featured image: Zoë Reeve via Unsplash