The following speech was delivered by City of Cape Town Executive Mayor, Patricia de Lille, at the opening of the InvestSA Western Cape one-stop-shop in St George’s Mall, Cape Town today, 8 September 2017. Invest SA will be host to experts at national, provincial and municipal level to cut red tape and help ease doing business in the city, the Western Cape and South Africa. Invest Cape Town will have a permanent presence at InvestSA.
President Jacob Zuma; Deputy Minister of the Department and Trade and Industry, Bulelani Magwanishe; Acting Premier, MEC for Economic Opportunities, Alan Winde;
Directors-General from national and provincial government; Wesgro CEO, Tim Harris; members of the diplomatic community, business leaders and investors; members of the media; ladies and gentlemen.
Good morning, goeie dag, molweni, as-salaam alaikum.
It is an honour to welcome you today to Cape Town, a forward-looking globally competitive business destination.
Cape Town is blessed with an iconic international reputation as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, which many tourists have on their bucket lists.
While we certainly want to hold onto that reputation, we are also determined to show the international and domestic community that Cape Town has more than just beauty. We are home to a thriving and diverse economy that is filled with investment opportunities.
I am proud to say Mr President that our efforts in this regard are certainly paying off as in the last financial year alone, through the collective efforts of the City and our partner organisations, we have managed to attract R2,7 billion worth of investment that has resulted in more than 6 200 jobs created for the people of Cape Town.
This success should not just be seen as a boom for Cape Town, but rather as a contribution to the much-needed national goal of attracting investment and jobs in South Africa as a whole.
These results did not come about by chance, but by change and a concerted effort to assure both the domestic and international community that we are open for business.
It started with getting the basic rights, making sure that we have sound, clean governance, proper infrastructure and a City government that is responsive to the needs of our residents and businesses.
Our work to attract more business was amplified and has seen great success since we opened a one-stop-shop for investors in the Mayor’s Office in 2012 to assist investors with all the information and advice they need about legislative requirements for opening up a business in Cape Town.
Every day my team in the Enterprise and Investment Department, which sits in the Mayor’s Directorate, is working with investors to make sure they have a smooth landing for their investments and that they are able to navigate seamlessly through the legislative processes.
We are indeed pleased that we will now have a national one-stop-shop with the Western Cape investment office to support our efforts and provide us with greater access to the full might of the relevant national government departments.
This access will bring a comprehensive service offering to investors.
In implementing the City’s Economic Growth Strategy, Social Development Strategy, and International Relations Policy to attract foreign direct investment, we are addressing the top priorities that investors are looking for.
Investors look for good infrastructure and in this regard our contribution to economic growth is by investing R6 billion annually into infrastructure that not only attracts new investment, but proactively redresses the imbalances of apartheid spatial planning and promotes social and economic inclusion.
As a further testament to our commitment to infrastructure-led growth, in July we took our inaugural green bond of R1 billion to the market.
The bond was significantly oversubscribed, as 29 investors made offers totalling R4,3 billion in response the R1 billion that was being sold.
This is a firm display of the confidence that investors have in Cape Town to deliver on our commitments and invest in infrastructure which will enable even more economic growth and job creation.
We are also creating a compact, well-connected city. An ideal place to live, work, play and invest in.
A key lever we are using to enhance our investment into infrastructure is our award-winning Transit-Oriented Development Strategy in which the City will be the catalyst investor.
With TOD, we will invest either by providing transport infrastructure or releasing City-owned land to create the crowding-in effect for the private sector to come on board with economic development located close to major transit corridors and affordable, inclusive housing opportunities.
Our TOD strategy will enhance densification to reverse apartheid spatial planning by stopping urban sprawl and bringing people closer to work opportunities.
Mr President, we are competing in a global village and in doing so our Economic Growth Strategy also has a strong focus on building economic ties with the rest of the Africa and contributing to the Africa Rising narrative through our Enhanced African Agenda.
This agenda under our foreign relations policy aims to strengthen trade and investment between our region and African cities.
In advancing trade and investment between ourselves and the rest of the world, we have a clear bias towards Africa.
In July, I led a business delegation of 15 local companies to Ethiopia, which has already resulted in a R200 million deal which will create many jobs and opportunities for the people of Cape Town.
I have led similar delegations to Angola, the United States, and Turkey, and will be undertaking a trip to Kenya next year as well.
The world over, cities are the drives of change and the engine rooms of national economies.
Our efforts in executing our Economic Growth Strategy have paid off as Cape Town was ranked 21st in the world for our foreign direct investment strategy by FDI Intelligence – a division of the Financial Times.
We have made great strides, but there is still so much more to be done to create the much-needed jobs for the people of our city and our country.
In closing, may I ask Mr President, that if for some reason we don’t receive the appropriate level of support from the departments that I can call you up directly and you will deal with them?
On a more serious note, we are really happy and we want to say thank you for opening the Invest Western Cape one-stop-shop. It is an excellent example of government at all three levels making progress possible, together.