Metro opens new biz centre

New initiative to provide development support to aspiring entrepreneurs in Uitenhage area

ANEW development centre aimed at supporting small businesses in Uitenhage was launched yesterday. Aspiring entrepreneurs will now have the one-stop centre on their doorstep instead of having to travel to Port Elizabeth to seek help for their businesses.

The centre will assist with registering new businesses, conduct business health checks and help entrepreneurs register on the central supplier database.

It will also teach small business owners all they need to know about filling in tender documents.

Based at the Uitenhage Science Centre, there will be workshops for small businesses and entrepreneurs on how to register their businesses, draw up proposals, link up with industry professionals and receive advice on tax and bookkeeping.

The Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality’s economic development, tourism and agriculture (EDTA) executive director, Anele Qaba, said people would no longer have to travel long distances, spending money they did not have, just to ask for advice.

“The idea from EDTA was that we needed to go to where the people are and we need to provide support to them,” Qaba said.

Speaking at the launch, mayor Athol Trollip said if the metro did not create opportunities for people, the city would not grow into a vibrant economy.

Trollip said with the centre, they hoped to increase development in previously disadvantaged communities, who were kept out of the mainstream economy to be job seekers instead of job creators.

“Black people who lived in informal settlements primarily were destined to be job seekers and systematically kept out of the economy for 100 years in this country and, more especially, in the 48 years of apartheid,” he said.

Trollip said the centre was a partnership between the municipality, Business Place, Absa and the Eastern Cape government.

“If it doesn’t create opportunity, entrepreneurs and enterprise and jobs in the city, then we would rethink,” he said.

“We must take people from selling fruit in the street who have an idea to have more than that, to become individuals who employ other people and start growing our economy.”

Asked what the metro had in store to revitalise Uitenhage’s economy, the municipality’s economic development, tourism and agriculture political head, Andrew Whitfield, said the centre was an example of the municipality’s commitment to providing services that support small businesses in and around Uitenhage.

“Our vision is to assist small businesses to grow into suppliers to local automotive and component manufacturers,” he said.

He said the municipality had tasked the Mandela Bay Development Agency with the revitalisation of the Uitenhage Science Centre and surrounding precinct to stimulate both local economic development and tourism.

However, Whitfield could not confirm how much money would be invested in the project.

“It is in the early stages. It will, however, be a major project,” he said.

Lillian Bouwer, 30, from Lapland, who was the only aspiring entrepreneur at the launch, said she was excited about using the centre as she had always wanted to start her own business.