This week, Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis and Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Growth, Alderman James Vos spoke to Capetonians during a livestream interaction to share details of the City’s Ease of Doing Business initiative. The session saw the Mayor and Alderman Vos respond to questions and comments from business owners in the metro.
In its initial phases, the Ease of Doing Business initiative will focus on what the City, as the service delivery agent, can do to improve the local business environment. The initiative will culminate in the implementation of an electronic dashboard that will be facilitated by the City’s Enterprise and Investment Department within the Economic Growth Directorate and will track business-facing services rendered by the City.
For example, the dashboard will monitor the performance of business-focused services such as the finalisation of commercial electricity connections or building plan approvals.
‘The guiding priority for everything that we do as a City government is to support meaningfully faster economic growth that enables people to lift themselves out of poverty. Making Cape Town the easiest place to do business will help to create new jobs which is core to improving quality of life,’ said Mayor Hill-Lewis.
‘We want to understand what makes doing business and creating jobs in Cape Town more difficult than it needs to be. With that understanding, we can start to identify what progress looks like, and then monitor progress over time. Today’s engagement is the first step in this consultation process,’ said Mayor Hill-Lewis.
‘During the first phase of the programme, we will conduct an online survey so that business owners within the metro can help us to identify which indicators should be reflected in the dashboard. As the people at the coalface, you experience first-hand the impacts of our municipal services and how it helps or hinders your business. The City will then gather the results of the feedback and collate it with the findings of other relevant research to build the dashboard,’ said Alderman Vos.
Through the initiative, the City aims to build on the findings and lessons of the 2018 World Bank’s Sub-National Doing Business (SNDB) Survey which ranked Cape Town as the top municipality in the country for granting electricity and construction permits.
While the Bank is discontinuing the survey, the City is pursuing the reform agenda it started and is going a step further by honing its focus on the particular needs of Cape Town’s business community.
Alderman Vos said that the City is working hard to create conditions that facilitate economic development and investment, citing the dedicated Investment Facilitation Branch and the Business Hub helpdesk as examples.
‘To realise the full spectrum of opportunities for innovators and small businesses, the City must get the basics right and listen to them when they tell us where we can do better,’ said Alderman Vos.
‘Once we have gone through all the processes, the dashboard will then go live and you will have the ability to hold us accountable,’ said Mayor Hill-Lewis.
To participate in the survey, visit: https://www.research.net/r/DoingBusinessCT
The closing date for public participation in the survey is 9 September 2022.
The recording of the virtual event will be made available on the City of Cape Town’s YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/CityofCapeTown021 in due course.
If you have any questions related to City business, please email them to Business.Support@capetown.gov.za.