She was speaking during a media briefing on the Accelerated Shared Growth Initiative for SA economic programme, in Parliament, yesterday, as part of her answers to questions concerning the business process outsourcing (BPO) aspect of the initiative.
Questions centred on whether government had signed a formal understanding with national operator Telkom to lower telecommunications costs, and what kind of representation had been made to her office by US companies wishing to set up call centres in this country.
Mlambo-Ngucka answered: "No formal agreement has been signed between government and Telkom. What we have done is set up the mechanisms so that companies wishing to engage with them can. Companies such as IBM and TeleTech don't need us to negotiate deals for them."
Industry bodies
She also mentioned industry bodies, such as the SA Call Centre Community and Calling the Cape, played a role in discussions between Telkom and the US companies.
She noted trade and industry minister Mandisi Mpahlwa is leading a delegation to the US to brief companies there about the South African government's BPO incentives to encourage foreign investment.
Luke Mills, Calling the Cape executive director, who is with the delegation, confirms TeleTech is poised to make an entry into the South African market. IBM already has a small call centre operation here, he notes.
"TeleTech most definitely has plans to become a significant employer in SA and create between 5 000 and 10 000 jobs eventually. They are probably the biggest BPO company of their size in the world."
Mills says TeleTech's first centre will be in Cape Town, later expanding to other locations.
First to use incentives
He says TeleTech will be the first foreign-owned company to use the Department of Trade and Industry's (DTI's) BPO incentive scheme. This includes government allowing a company to recoup its capital expenditure (capex) up to R60 000 per job created and receive up to R12 000 for every person it has to train.
"Capex and training are some of the most significant costs for starting a call centre and the DTI, along with the National Treasury, has come up with a world-class incentive package," Mills says.
TeleTech, although relatively unknown in SA, is one of the largest US call centre companies, with 47 000 employees, located in 88 centres, in 16 countries.
Listed on the New York Stock Exchange, TeleTech has a market capitalisation of $2.5 billion (about R18 billion). In its latest fourth quarter results, it posted its highest quarterly revenue of $336.7 million (R2.558 billion), a 10.7% increase from a year ago.
The company says in its results statement it is expanding into two new emerging markets that will exclusively provide offshore markets. It also plans to continue expansion into other attractive offshore markets.
At the time of publication, TeleTech had not responded to an e-mail query from ITWeb.
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