Speech by the City’s Executive Mayor, Patricia de Lille, on
day 2 of the 46th annual SAPAO International Convention
and Property Exhibition at the CTICC on 11 June 2014
The CEO of the South African Property Owners Association (SAPOA), Neil
Gopal,
Members of SAPOA,
Honoured guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Good morning, goeie môre, molweni, as-salaam alaikum, shalom.
It is a great pleasure to welcome all of you to Cape Town.
Last year, I promised you a great reception if you brought your business here
and I am sure over the next few days you will find this city welcoming,
hospitable and world-class in catering to your needs.
What is more, you will find a city that is safe, reliable and manages to
accommodate the needs of both residents and businesses.
You, and the organisations you represent, are what help drive this city’s
economy with your direct and indirect job creation and with your
contribution in terms of rates and service charges.
And I would like to thank you for those contributions.
While I know that some of you may not be the biggest supporters of our
commercial charges, I have no doubt that all of you with investments in
Cape Town know that you get premium service for premium charges.
We make no secret of the fact that we do everything in our power to help
the private sector succeed and grow.
SAPOA Western Cape commissioned a report on ‘the role and impact of the
commercial property sector’ in our local economy.
Some of the key findings include the fact that the private property sector
contributes 11,3% or R24,3 billion of our R215 billion GDP.
Of that, 55% or R13,3 billion is attributed to property management activities
and 45% or R11 billion to construction activities.
And overall, the industry sustains just under 100 000 jobs in Cape Town.
This is a tremendous contribution to our economy and in sectors that create
employment – an all-too-precious commodity in this current economic
climate.
Because of the significance of this contribution, I pledged last year to help
the private property sector even more as a city government.
I promised an investment facilitator in my office to act as my direct
representative with business and the market.
Since that time, I have appointed Tim Harris, a former member of parliament,
to the position and he looks forward to working with anyone who needs a
direct line to the Mayor.
We promised an exciting approach to investment incentives as a local
government and have now rolled out our package of hard and soft
incentive measures to Atlantis, where 23 companies have made use of them
already.
These include paying mixed-use electricity charges at 2012 rates and the
waiving of development contribution fees.
We are in the process of discussing further roll-outs of this exciting scheme.
The City also undertook to deliver a user-friendly development applications
management system.
I am pleased to say that we have delivered on our promise. Phase 1,
electronic submission and circulation, is being implemented.
Full submissions and the tracking thereof by applicants will be rolled out later
this year.
And most excitingly, our new Economic Areas Management Programme
(ECAMP) is ready to use.
This web-based tool allows us to track 70 business and industrial nodes across
the city by analysing their current performance and long-term potential.
It utilises a variety of open-source data to identify local-barriers to investment
opportunities and has been reviewed by leading experts from both the
private and academic sectors.
Indeed, it comes on the back of our innovative open data policy which aims
to make a whole range of City information sources open to the public – a first
in South Africa.
I urge all of you to engage with our current public participation process on
the policy.
The ECAMP platform has been well received by a major financial institution,
the National Treasury and the World Bank.
I urge those of you who have not yet experienced to go to the City’s stand
here at the conference and try it out.
In a data-driven age, this kind of analytical tool will amplify the information
upon which you make your investment decisions and could lead to an even
more sophisticated property sector that sources all possible data streams to
drive the market forward.
Furthermore, we are at an advanced stage of our fixed asset planning,
having already identified provisional City assets in terms of land and facilities
that we want to dispose of.
While I cannot go into the details now, I urge you to watch out for some
exciting City prospects that will be coming onto the market soon.
And something which I did not promise last year but have delivered anyway
is an electronic rates clearance system which will go live later this year.
Many developers have expressed their frustration to me that, after all the
hard work of a deal has been done, the only outstanding matter between
the developer and their cash flow is the rates clearance certificate.
This new system will be fully automated and will result in clearance times
being brought down to approximately 15 days.
This new system is part of our partnership with business; part of a way of doing
things of value for our partners.
And if partnership is about creating value, then we must look at how we
make value creation sustainable for the future.
In the City of Cape Town, we are pleased to offer bursaries for students who
wish to develop those skills that we have identified as essential to the City’s
future.
This is in addition to our own up-skilling and training of existing staff members
to help them perform in their current roles.
In order to ensure that the property sector remains an essential part of the
local economy, I am pleased to announce the City of Cape Town’s
contribution to growing the pool of skilled individuals in this field.
I have pledged R50 000 from the Mayor’s Fund to the SAPOA bursary scheme
and challenge every CEO sitting here today to do the same.
It is only by investing in solutions for our future that we safeguard the
sustainability of the direct and indirect positive benefits of the private
property sector to our city, our businesses and our communities.
The creation of future value in those with potential is a far-sighted move
made by those who understand that economic and social development,
which is to the benefit of everyone including business, will make progress
possible – together.
In conclusion, please enjoy your stay in Cape Town; and welcome, once
again.
I hope that those of you with portfolios here will look to expand them and for
those who don’t let me tell you: there is no time like the present.
Thank you, baie dankie, enkosi.