Following the Budget Speech by the Finance Minister, Trevor Manuel last week, the country’s body for organised tourism businesses - Tourism Business Council of South Africa (TBCSA) has said in a statement that it appreciates the Ministers willingness to address various macro-economic issues that continues to influence the country’s development. However lack of locating and acknowledging the role tourism play within South Africa’s broader economic growth challenges remains a concern for the sector.  

This according to TBCSA’s Chief Executive Officer Mmatšatši Marobe, who said, government has in its AsgiSA project prepared a sector strategy in an effort to promote private sector investment, and tourism industry was one of the sectors indentified to drive growth and development. “The industry viewed this government step as a life time opportunity and headed to governments call by striving to produce good numbers year on year. In 2006 the industry registered a record number of 8, 4 million visitors to the country, which contributed immensely to the country’s GDP and job creation.”

“It is for this reason that while we applaud the minister and the National Treasury for sound interventions in addressing the deep-seated inequalities and eventually striving towards eliminating the Second Economy, we think its proper to urge government to consider “special dispensation measures” to stimulate the much needed growth and job creation possible in the tourism sector. “Much work still needs to be done to “demystify” tourism to aspiring entrepreneurs across the various facets of our society, training and development skills and attracting tourists into our shores” On the other hand, there is the all important challenge of ensuring that we have the necessary products and offerings to deliver the South African experience to our visitors - the need to encourage sustained investment.

There is a need for government to consider putting in place “special dispensation” the likes of tourist investment friendly tax breaks and incentives which could go a long way to encourage investment by both domestic and external investors. The benefits as seen in other parts of the world are in employment creation, empowering aspiring entrepreneurs and stimulating growth in some of the depressed parts of our country”.    

Marobe said the industry welcomes the increased budget allocation in the critical sectors of safety and security, education and skills development. “We view this as a necessary step which will undoubtedly add impetus to the country’s growth prospects. We urge all spheres of government, civil society and private sector across the economy to get involved in making sure that this injection from government bears fruit – that implementation does indeed take place. It’s not all left to government – we all have a role to play. As the business sector, we hope that this increased budget will also go towards improving learning and teaching conditions across the spectrum and the much needed improvement in teacher remuneration.

The tourism industry is one of the sectors most vulnerable to the effect of safety and security and as such we are encouraged by government’s increased commitment to this function. We will continue to work with the country’s policing authorities and to support the work of institutions such as Business Against Crime. When we work together, much progress is achieved.

On the ESKOM financial assistance of R60 billion for a period of five years, Marobe said this will add impetus to national utilities effort of solving the current electricity problem in the long term. In the same breath, the business community and consumer alike hopes that this injection also go towards softening the expected gradual increase of electricity cost in the country – it can’t all come at one go in view of the prevailing environment of increasing inflation due to ever increasing fuel costs, food and interest rates. Let’s not forget to give this economy a chance to grow in these prevailing hard times. She said one of the reasons investors chose South Africa as a preferred investment destination was the fact that country is one of the few still enjoying affordable electricity.   

As a sector however, it must be said that this prevailing hard do not all augur well since they will force consumers to “tighten their belts” – less travelling as they contend with the daily struggles of making ends meet

In this year’s presentation the most notable development being the easing of corporate tax from 29% to 28% - a move Finance Minister believed would contribute to lowering the cost for new investment, said TBCSA Chairman Thabiso Tlelai. “The tourism industry welcomes this intervention as it will speed up economic growth and meet the government's social obligations to the people.”