The Western Cape Trade and Promotion Agency (Wesgro) is investigating leads that could bring more IT outsourcing and call centre investment into the province, according to Wesgro CEO Ismail Dockrat.
Speaking to ITWeb after the Wesgro annual general meeting (AGM) on Tuesday, Dockrat said: "We are currently investigating between 40 and 50 leads that could potentially bring a lot of foreign direct investment into the Western Cape."
Wesgro was instrumental in facilitating the R100 billion call centre project by British insurance group The Budget Group, which was announced towards the end of last year.
In terms of its new strategic plan presented at the AGM, the agency has an ambitious target of bringing R5 billion in new investments into the province by March 2007. The first R700 million has to be in by March 2005.
The Western Cape currently has 24% of its active working age groups unemployed, which is slightly under the 28% registered on a national basis. However, only 30 out of every 300 Africans in the province are likely to find work, compared with 55 out of every 100 coloured people and 92 out of every 100 white people.
The ICT sector employs about 27 000 people, making it one of the largest non-cyclical employers in the province. However, 80% of that workforce is employed by very small companies.
"Our skills base and our relatively cheap workforce means that we can compete with other more established outsourcing and call centre countries such as India," Dockrat said. "If there is an outsourcing job going anywhere in the world, then we want the Western Cape to have a fair chance of bringing it here."
Dockrat said Wesgro is negotiating with several large and well known US and European companies about establishing business process managing centres in the province, but he declined to name them.
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