The Trade, Investment and Innovation Unit of the ECDC markets the Eastern Cape to investors, supports existing investors, promotes exports and the ECDC as an implementing agent for development initiatives.
Trade Promotion
The Trade Promotion Unit provides opportunities to export-ready local businesses to penetrate local and foreign markets by means of non-financial support. Major export markets are Germany, Hong Kong, the US, China, Netherlands, Namibia and India.
Once a company has been assessed as “export-ready”, the unit facilitates annual trade missions, exhibitions and thematic workshops to offer networking platforms, trade/export knowledge and access to prospective clients in targeted countries.
Investment
The Investment Promotion Unit is the official investment promotion agency of the Eastern Cape Province. The unit actively markets the province and facilitates foreign and local direct investment. Services include lobbying for conducive policy, after-care investor services, assistance to investors to access incentive schemes and local business networks, providing market information and facilitating access to greenfield and brownfield sites.
Investors will find four universities and a number of TVET colleges which offer high-impact tertiary education. Set-up costs for new business are extremely competitive in terms of land and rental prices, construction costs and overall input costs. The Eastern Cape has three ports, four airports and good road and rail links and offers easy access to domestic, SADC and global markets.
Local, provincial and national government have a range of investment incentives available for new and existing operations. These incentives range from manufacturing rebates to preferential production factor costs.
Innovation
The Innovation sub-unit facilitates strategic domestic and international investment into sector-driven, catalytic innovation projects. The sub-unit facilitates investment and growth into new industry sectors introduced by the global shift to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
This is achieved through:
- support for catalytic and high-impact projects that can unlock economic activity and promote local beneficiation and diversification;
- promotion of new products that encourage import substitution;
- growth of a pipeline that creates viable opportunities for the Development Finance and Properties Development units and for government and entrepreneurs.
Contact
If you are interested to do business, trade or invest in the Eastern Cape Province, contact the Eastern Cape Development Corporation (ECDC):
The Eastern Cape Development Corporation (ECDC) is the host of the Eastern Cape Investor One Stop Shop. Read more…
