Hon Chairperson, hon Ministers, hon Deputy Ministers, hon members, our guests and the national Department of Tourism, as we move towards 20 years of democracy, from 3 million arrivals in 1994 to 3,5 million to date, the Minister has highlighted that we are presenting our Budget Vote against a backdrop of a favourable tourism growth of 10,2% in 2012.
Such development is a clear indication that this administration made the right decision in identifying tourism as one of the top six priority areas in the New Growth Path, strictly focussing on the promotion of economic development and job creation in South Africa.
South Africa as a global player and a leader in Africa is strategically positioned to play a meaningful role, thanks to the leadership of President Jacob Zuma, who took time to demonstrate the important role played by tourism, by announcing the 2012 statistics himself. The implications demonstrate, amongst others, the importance of the role that government is playing in enabling the private sector to have the necessary environment to invest in the economy. To date, we contribute approximately 9% to the gross domestic product, GDP. According to the 2010-11 statistics we have created more than half a million jobs to complement the not so often predictable traditional sectors of mining, locomotives and manufacturing. [Interjections.]
We continue to yield very positive results, which can be attributed to the wonderful partnership that we have with the private sector. Our National Tourism Sector Strategy, NTSS, which is at the implementation stage, is a product of extensive consultation. Today we call upon all partners and role- players to play their part to realise our target of contributing R499 billion to the GDP and to create the much-needed target of 225 000 jobs by 2020.
We now have the National Development Plan, which also recognises tourism as one of the main drivers of the country's economy and employment. The plan envisages the promotion of South Africa as a major tourism destination with the ability to contribute towards sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction. We as the national Department of Tourism, in working together with the private sector, have to revise our figures and timelines in order to meet the set target of 11 million jobs by 2030.
In working together with the private sector, our main objective is to ensure that we continue to develop a sustainable tourism industry. Our priorities as a department remain the same, and our strategic plan for 2013- 2014 is in line with our vision to ensure continuity and the attainment of our objectives, as set out in the NTSS.
Our firm focus on those priorities is to ensure the improvement of the quality and competitiveness of our destination through the provision of appropriate skills for the sector. We believe that one of the most important competitive factors in the tourism sector is the availability of a skilled and capacitated workforce with passion for service excellence.
The National Tourism Careers Expo, the NTCE, which we host annually, and the Service Excellence campaign are two of the interventions that the Department of Tourism, in partnership with the industry and the Culture, Art, Tourism, Hospitality and Sport Sector Education and Training Authority, Cathsseta, is driving. In 2012 alone, the NTCE's overall learner participation, which only included preregistered learners, was approximately 7 306. There were recordings of an additional 503 day passes, 247 were educators and, additional to these numbers, there were students from higher educational institutions and unemployed tourism graduates. Preparations for 2013 are under way with the department, contributing approximately R3 million. It will be hosted in the Eastern Cape, in partnership with the Eastern Cape province.
Forward thinking is paramount in order to sustain our competitive edge. Tourism resources alone for a successful tourism industry are not enough, as I also heard hon members indicating earlier. However, it serves as a crucial factor for development in the tourism industry. It also hinges inextricably on the quality of the training and education given to the people who are responsible for the delivery of these services. As tourism is a people-intensive industry, education and training should be placed in the forefront of tourism development.
Investment in the youth will result in a much more sustainable and flexible workforce. We will therefore continue working with the private sector, exposing our youth to numerous opportunities within the sector. Furthermore, we urge more industry players to open their doors for opportunities for our young people to gain experience and exposure essential for future employment. We also urge the industry to provide accredited training within their institutions. We also look forward to initiatives by established industry players to coach, mentor, train and partner with our small, medium and micro enterprises, SMMEs, in order to transfer skills and assist them in getting into the market.
The incentive programme transferred from the Department of Trade and Industry, DTI, to the Department of Tourism must cater for the support of such initiatives that would, in the long run, tackle our transformation agenda and see our SMMEs grow, as well as encourage participation in the mainstream economy. This year our department is setting up its institutional mechanism that will shape what our department seeks to achieve through this programme.
Furthermore, the announcement by the Minister at the indaba in the past two days - on the consolidation of our tourism awards - is a step in the right direction. And we look forward to the support that will be given to the winners in order to sustain them, to see them grow and to link them with funding institutions. It's still inexplicable that one of our Emerging Tourism Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Eteya, winners, who applied to the Industrial Development Corporation, IDC, could not be accepted because of the criteria that are still not favourable to them.
The national Department of Tourism, Umalusi and Cathsseta entered into a partnership to conduct an analysis and evaluation of the existing curriculum for tourism, hospitality and consumer study subjects in the National Qualifications Framework, NQF, levels 2, 3 and 4 of the National Certificate: Vocational offered at further education and training, FET, colleges and the National Senior Certificate, NSC, offered at high schools.
The main purpose of this exercise was to establish the value and quality status of the intended curriculum for these subjects in the overall education and training terrain, and to determine whether the existing curriculum is in line with the industry skills needs.
Multistakeholder working groups of experts worked on the workshop-based research process and came up with the first phase of their final tourism and hospitality report, which was launched in March this year. The articulation of this content needs to be attended to, hence the second phase of this final report will focus on the NSC report by the end of 2013- 14.
The alignment of our tourism strategies and activities as government is long overdue, as was indicated by speakers before me. It gives me great pleasure to inform this House that our department has launched a tourism capacity programme at the local government tourism conference that we hosted in February this year, which will ensure that tourism policies filter to all government levels seamlessly. We expect to see tourism as one of the key growth pillars for local municipalities.
We also went a step further in our efforts to strengthen public-sector capacity in the tourism sector. In our quest to facilitate improved service delivery, we worked closely with National Treasury and provincial departments to develop an improved budget structure for tourism and to ensure more appropriate budget allocations across all levels of government.
In this financial year, we will continue to expand the number and range of knowledge-information tools available on the Tourism Knowledge Portal. [Time expired.] [Applause.]