South Africa prioritising inclusive tourism growth

A tour­ism devel­op­ment fund will be cre­ated by the gov­ern­ment in col­lab­or­a­tion with devel­op­ment fin­ance insti­tu­tions to sup­port small- and medi­um-sized enter­prises (SMEs), includ­ing com­munity-based projects.

While tour­ism growth had been impress­ive in terms of num­bers, Xasa emphas­ised that it was import­ant that more people benefited from it to help achieve the “rad­ic­al eco­nom­ic trans­form­a­tion” that Pres­id­ent Jac­ob Zuma has prioritised.

Depart­ment of Tour­ism Dir­ect­or-gen­er­al Vic­tor Thar­age warned that if trans­form­a­tion and inclus­iv­ity were not achieved tour­is­m’s long-term sus­tain­ab­il­ity would be threatened.

Min­is­ter Xasa said state-owned assets and prop­er­ties would be lever­aged to bring in “black man­age­ment capa­city and concessionaires”.

Her depart­ment will be pro­mot­ing black entre­pren­eurs through its pro­cure­ment budget and the imple­ment­a­tion of the 30% set-aside policy, which man­dates that 30% of state pro­cure­ment is channeled to black-owned SMEs.

Tour­ism enter­prises would also be iden­ti­fied as bene­fi­ciar­ies of grant fund­ing provided under the Black Indus­tri­al­ist Pro­gramme, which aims to cre­ate 100 black indus­tri­al­ists by the end of the fin­an­cial year.

Details of the Depart­ment of Tourism’s long-term strategy to grow South Africa’s tour­ism sec­tor are con­tained in its nation­al tour­ism sec­tor strategy, which is cur­rently open for pub­lic comment.

Full story at Busi­ness Live.

What is “radical economic transformation”?

Accord­ing to a Bloomberg art­icle: “The phrase “rad­ic­al eco­nom­ic trans­form­a­tion” has become the South Afric­an government’s new man­tra as it advoc­ates giv­ing the nation’s black major­ity a big­ger stake in the eco­nomy 23 years after the end of white-minor­ity rule.

“What exactly it means is unclear. The phrase doesn’t appear in the Nation­al Devel­op­ment Plan, the government’s eco­nom­ic blue­print, and Pres­id­ent Jac­ob Zuma and his deputy Cyril Ram­a­phosa have painted dif­fer­ent pic­tures of how it should be trans­lated into policy.

“Zuma is due to step down as lead­er of the rul­ing Afric­an Nation­al Con­gress in Decem­ber and as pres­id­ent in 2019, and Ram­a­phosa is one of the front-run­ners to suc­ceed him.”

What is the Black Industrialist Programme?

Accord­ing to South Africa’s Depart­ment of Trade & Industry: “The con­tin­ued eco­nom­ic dom­in­ance of the white minor­ity, as reflec­ted through the pat­terns of own­er­ship, man­age­ment and con­trol of stra­tegic resources with­in the eco­nomy, sys­tem­at­ic­ally dir­ects almost all eco­nom­ic oppor­tun­it­ies and bene­fits away from the major­ity black population.

“It is in the con­text of the above that the Black Indus­tri­al­ists Pro­gramme arises. It is a prac­tic­al tool of achiev­ing the demo­graph­ic trans­form­a­tion of eco­nom­ic power and spa­tial con­cen­tra­tion with­in the over­all indus­tri­al strategy out­lined in [the Indus­tri­al Policy Action Plan (IPAP)] and the object­ives of nation­al devel­op­ment as artic­u­lated in the [Nation­al Devel­op­ment Plan (NDP)].”