City and Wesgro work hand in glove to secure investments

This week is the beginning of the brand new monetary 12 months with a renewed give attention to programmes aimed toward helping all sectors and ranges of the economic system, from work-seekers to entrepreneurs, small companies and high-growth sectors.

 Within the Metropolis’s Financial Progress Directorate’s finances, funding is allotted in the direction of varied Particular Function Autos which are tasked with contributing in the direction of new enterprise alternatives in particular fields starting from funding promotion, inexperienced vitality, tourism, marine manufacturing, clothes manufacturing, name centres and know-how that can create jobs and financial prosperity for Capetonians.

Our partnership with Wesgro is an instance of this success, with the organisation being the official tourism, commerce and funding promotion company for Cape City and the Western Cape.

It offers me nice satisfaction that the Metropolis and Wesgro shall be persevering with this partnership with its sustained sturdy dedication to initiatives that can assist develop our economic system and convey about employment.

Following consultations with business roleplayers and enterprise teams throughout Cape City, I gave cautious consideration to what sort of programmes Wesgro might want to undertake and what the Metropolis will fund. These initiatives will give Cape City a aggressive benefit and create native, African and international connections that can enable commerce to flourish:

·       This consists of the Air Entry and Cruise Cape City initiatives, which have related the Mom Metropolis with different international locations, bringing extra air and sea travellers to our shores. Not solely has this introduced extra vacationers to Cape City, it has additionally boosted our hyperlink to key supply markets, permitting for extra international exports of Mom Metropolis-made items. Extra exports means elevated manufacturing, which suggests extra jobs and a stronger economic system.

·       Associated to this, they may also facilitate an Export Development programme this 12 months that can embrace coaching Capetonian corporations in promoting their companies and merchandise overseas. Wesgro may also have a devoted unit focussed on unlocking service export alternatives, together with analysis and technique improvement and Outward International Direct Funding missions and promotional and networking occasions.

·       Wesgro’s www.capetradeportal.com – which serves as a market, an export useful resource centre and digital commerce platform connecting Cape City and Western Cape-based exporters with worldwide consumers 24/7 – continues to draw consumers from throughout the globe. The group will proceed to construct and improve the platform, to additional help native exporters in assembly potential consumers world wide.

·       Equally, boosting the metro’s already stellar profile within the MICE (conferences, incentive, conferences and exhibitions) sector by way of the Cape City & Western Cape Conference Bureau. The bureau has secured 27 bids for main conferences that can happen within the coming years. With simply these occasions, we’re estimating {that a} projected R393,4 million shall be injected into the native economic system.

There isn’t any time to waste. We’ve got already begun the work of getting these initiatives off the bottom. Along with our companions, the Metropolis is shifting in the direction of its objective of making a extra inclusive and sustainable economic system.

The mission is to develop the economic system and construct a metropolis of hope. With it, the Metropolis’s directorate and I can proceed to manage and fund initiatives, just like the Enterprise Retention and Growth programme in business nodes throughout the metro to assist corporations to not solely maintain their doorways open, however to develop. We simply launched this initiative in Atlantis and Epping and subsequent month we’re all set to roll it out in Stikland and Blackheath.

Wesgro CEO, Wrenelle Stander, commented: ‘The Metropolis of Cape City is a valued stakeholder of Wesgro, with a shared imaginative and prescient to extend Cape City and the Western Cape’s international competitiveness throughout tourism, commerce and funding. We stay devoted to selling the Cape as a world-class tourism vacation spot, an funding vacation spot of selection for international and native buyers, a sought-after supply marketplace for items and companies and a filmmaker’s hub on the continent.’