The Eastern Cape Development Corporation (ECDC) has been rated as one of Africa’s best investment promotion agencies by London-based GDP Global Development and Washington-based and World Bank Group division, The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency.

The corporation’s scored full marks in investor aftercare, ensuring it a place in the 2005 Investment Promotion Agency (IPA) model team together with the Gauteng-based development agency GEDA who achieving a ranking of “world class” for its outstanding performance for marketing.

The aim of the survey, which was first conducted in 2001, focuses on the capabilities of national, regional and city investment promotion agencies.

A total of 178 agencies were assessed in four areas using 13 criteria:
• the quality of response in handling the initial investment enquiry
• the quality and relevance of the information in the initial response,
• the speed of response in submitting the initial response; and
• the nature of the agency follow-up to the initial response pack.

Forty-two of these agencies are from Africa; 102 were from emerging economies.

Pierre Leppan, ECDC acting enterprise promotion executive manager on ECDC’s performance: “This study provides us with some outstanding feedback on what is truly world-class. Our performance is encouraging, especially in the area of timely response and investor aftercare. Equally helpful are the recommendations where we can improve our performance such as better projecting ECDC’s image and improving investor information.”

ECDC investment promotion efforts have also received international support. Two German GTZ/CIM experts are based within the unit. Their role is to support the unit organisationally, in networking with Europe and provide project management skills and general business advice.

This year the World Bank has sponsored the assessment of developing country IPAs who says that “excellent performances were also achieved by IPAs from developing countries.”