City helps small traders

THE informal economy in Cape Town sustains about 140 000 people, according to data presented at the Informal Economy Summit.

Attended by more than 300 traders, trader organisations and small businesses, the summit showed while the informal sector may be relatively small, especially by emerging country standards, its penetration into the most vulnerable households in the city and its impact in terms of poverty reduction were large.

The city’s informal economy is made up of small- and microenterprises who are either entrepreneurs running their own businesses, or informal traders at public transport interchanges, along roadways and near shopping centres.

The one-day Informal Economy Summit on Thursday was a culmination of engagement sessions held across the city in the form of round-table discussions and microenterprise workshops.

Mayoral committee member for urban management Grant Twigg said the sector was represented by a diverse array of economic activities.

These included financial services, health care, retail in food and beverages, recycling, maintenance and repair of motor vehicles, and repair of personal and household goods.

“In this respect the two barriers to growth most frequently cited by owners of informal businesses are access to better locations and stifling government regulations – both of which have implications for how the City of Cape Town can best maximise the sector’s potential to help reduce unemployment and poverty.

“I am pleased that today’s session focused on making business easier for traders and how traders can maximise income opportunities,” Twigg said.

Some of the outcomes from the summit include:

● Developing a strategic partnership between all stakeholders in the informal economy to collaborate on the implementation of key developmental programmes;

● Initiating a structured engagement between the City and the informal sector and to review policies and by-laws that negatively impact on the growth potential of the informal economy; and

● Maximizing the opportunities in the waste economy by influencing changes in behaviour and promoting recycling by focusing on sorting of waste at source.