Call centres lure foreign investors
THE Business Trust is to focus on growing the call centre market this year, a move it believes will accelerate economic growth and reduce unemployment by 2010.
Business Trust CEO Brian Whittaker said yesterday that call centre investors would not be scared off by the electricity crisis that is likely to plague the country for some time, as most centres were built with generators, making it a good sector to target.
Speaking at the presentation of the trust’s 2007 annual results, Whittaker said: “The international investor community is familiar with similar constraints in other developing countries where the need for supplementary electricity- generating power is the norm.”
The only stumbling block has been pricing issues, which saw SA charging nearly twice as much as India for services, and for which Telkom has come under fire. Telkom and the trade and industry department have since set up new pricing incentives for call centre companies.
Whittaker said that if SA could lure even a fraction of the projected $60bn market, the R135m funding by the trust and the department could translate it into a R2bn investment and more than 100000 jobs.
Since September 2005, more than 35136 jobs have been created in the sector but development in was slow until last year, said Whittaker.
The trust set up a vehicle last year consisting of various contracted service providers to assist with core support facilities for the sector, as no such structure existed.
“We need to find a way to attract and net overseas investment,” said Whittaker. “I believe with incentives and training programmes this is a sector through which we can ideally achieve many of our job creating and growth incentives.”
Incentive schemes had already attracted R600m in investment by December 2007.
The Business Trust, which facilitates co-operation between business and the government and was set up under the Presidency, presented its annual report for 2007 in Sandton yesterday. The trust is midway through a five- year programme ending in 2010 to create jobs, build capacity and combat poverty.
The trust operates by finding special skills providers who work with the government to fast-track enterprises.
Whittaker said that for the first time in the history of the Business Trust, there was equal contribution by government and businesses last year, with each side putting in about R58m to fund various initiatives.
“We have seen an increase in government’s contribution for the period 2005 to 2010 of over R100m,” he said. “The biggest slice of the pie is still going to the Tourism Enterprise Programme (R334m), followed by business process outsourcing (R135m) and then the Expanded Public Works Programme (R110m). ”
The focus of the Business Trust has changed slightly in its second term, looking more at creating new ventures rather than funding existing ones.
The Expanded Public Works Programme, started in 2004 at government’s request, is well on its way to achieving its goal of creating a million jobs, but Whittaker said it had become clear during a review of the programme that to have a meaningful effect on unemployment it needed to create three times as many jobs — about 600000 a year.
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