Cape Town businesses are reporting stronger confidence in municipal services, with the City’s latest Business Satisfaction Survey recording an improved Public Service Quality score of 92.
The 2025/26 survey forms part of the City of Cape Town’s Ease of Doing Business Index, which measures businesses’ experiences when accessing municipal processes and services.
The overall Public Service Quality score increased from 86 in 2023/24 to 92 in 2025/26, placing the City within the survey’s “good performance” category.
The score measures businesses’ perceptions across four areas: overall City performance, trust in the municipality, fulfilment of its responsibilities as a service provider and its performance compared with other public institutions.
A total of 369 Cape Town businesses participated in the survey between February and June 2026, generating 603 individual responses across different business-facing services.
The Ease of Doing Business Index tracks nine indicators, including land-use rights, building plan approvals, wayleaves, energy connections and business licences. Digitisation serves as a tenth cross-cutting indicator.
Businesses reported positive experiences with the City’s E-services platform, including logging in, registering and navigating the digital system.
Business licences, informal trading permits, electricity and water connections and wayleaves were also generally rated positively.
The survey recorded improvements in areas including complexity, affordability, additional costs and turnaround times compared with the previous assessment.
Alderman James Vos, the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Growth, said the results indicated that reforms intended to make it easier to operate a business in Cape Town were beginning to be experienced by companies.
“The intention of this programme is simple: to further a culture of service, accountability and speed within the City, because in business, time is money,” Vos said.
The findings also identified areas where further improvement is required.
Land-use rights, building plan approvals and public land transfers remain among the most challenging municipal processes for businesses because of their complexity, multiple approval requirements and longer turnaround times.
Processing time emerged as the biggest concern across services, with delays potentially increasing costs and uncertainty for businesses.
“We can’t shy away from where we need to improve,” Vos said.
“We will continue to focus on simplifying our highest-impact development processes, strengthening coordination between departments, and giving businesses more certainty and visibility on where their applications stand.”
Beyond measuring satisfaction, the City’s Ease of Doing Business programme is intended to reduce administrative barriers that can affect investment, business expansion and economic activity.
The latest results indicate improving business confidence in several municipal services while also providing the City with specific areas where further reforms could make it easier and faster for businesses to operate.
