Madam House Chair, the latest data released by the Statistic SA confirmed that the tourism sector is not growing at its full potential and is, in fact, regressing. There are number of reasons for this.
This includes, but not limited to the current visa regime and visa processing issues and safety and security concerns. The statistics confirmed that fewer international tourists are visiting our shores, be it from African countries or other part of the world.
Countries specifically targeted by Tourism South Africa have shown a dramatic decrease in tourists to our country. This includes China, which has shown a decrease by 10%. German tourists have traditionally contributed high numbers of visitors to our shores, but those have decreased by 6,5%. Tourists from other African countries have also cumulatively to dropped by 1,4%. For this statistics to change, the Department of Tourism needs to do things differently as a start to this co-ordinating more aggressively and tightly with other departments such as Home Affairs and Police as well as entities such as SA National Parks, Sanparks. The time for government to partner with entities to work in silos is over.
In addition, the department needs to resolve the dispute with the chief executive officer, CEO, of Tourism South Africa. Government needs to redirect its budget to change
the image of South Africa. Activities such as Rugby World Cup victory this weekend should be capitalised on and piggy-banked on. To date government is allowing such opportunities to be lost. This must change so that the number of international tourists to our shores can increase. This would have knock- on affect on growing jobs and our economy. I thank you.