The revised Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Business Process Services (BPS) incentive launched on Tuesday, has taken into account South Africa’s increased maturity in terms of the services being offered, as the country is increasingly being asked to provide more complex back-office process services internationally, Trade and Industry Minister Dr Rob Davies said.

“Legal process outsourcing (LPO) and shared services subsectors are beginning to expand as South Africa proves its capability and capacity to provide such services,” he stated, in London, on Tuesday, when launching the revised incentive aimed at attracting investment and creating employment in South Africa through offshoring activities.

Davies mentioned that a key difference of the updated BPS incentive was the splitting of the incentive into Tier 1 (noncomplex) and Tier 2 (complex) work. The purpose of this was to attract more complex work such as LPO and shared service centres by offering a higher incentive for using and employing a higher skilled workforce.

According to Davies, investors and South African companies running BPS operations had also requested that the duration of the reviewed incentive be looked at.

“The previous incentive, which ended September 30, 2014, was offered over three years to companies creating over 50 offshore jobs. The companies presented a compelling argument that many of the industry’s contracts ran for five years and, therefore, it would provide a level of comfort to investors if the incentive was to also run for five years. [As a result,] the review by Everest Global took note of this and the new BPS incentive will run for five years from October 2014 to March 2019,” he stated.