Business Process enabling SA (BPeSA) Western Cape, an organisation that promotes contact centre and outsourcing, and the province’s department for finance, economic development & tourism have reached a deal with Internet Solutions (IS) to offer a new telecommunications incentive to international investors aimed at boosting the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector in the region.

The telecoms incentive offers free international voice and data services over IS’s “multi-protocol label switching” network to all new offshore investors in the Western Cape for the first six months.

The incentive complements the department of trade and industry’s national incentive scheme that provides wage subsidies for local employees of R40 000/employee for the first and second years and R32 000 for the third year.

Gareth Pritchard, CEO of BPeSA Western Cape, says the combination of these two offerings will help the Western Cape to rival the world’s top BPO destinations.

Alan Winde, minister for finance, economic development & tourism in the Western Cape, says his department is focused on building the province into an attractive place to live and work by “increasing our competitive edge in terms of pricing and by building an appropriately skilled workforce”.

“Major players such as Bloomberg and Amazon.com have recognised this and have chosen to base their operations here,” he says. “This incentive will induce others to follow suit and puts us on track to build the Western Cape into a world-class BPO and call centre hub.”

The Western Cape’s call centre industry is worth an estimated R6bn and is responsible for 30 000 jobs in the region. — Staff reporter, TechCentral