Tourism Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane says her department decided to release a draft recovery plan for the sector for further consultation with stakeholders and the general public before finalisation for submission to Cabinet
The OECD economic department’s director of country studies Álvaro Santos Pereira has said that tourism is a labour-intensive sector that can bring foreign currency into South Africa.
She said the recovery plan would be implemented in three phases over a two-year period and would focus on stimulating demand, protecting and renewing supply, and strengthening enabling capability. According to the recovery plan, tourism accounts for 2.9% of GDP and supports about 725 000 direct jobs.“Perhaps most importantly, inbound tourism generated R82.5 billion in direct foreign spend , contributing an equivalent of 9.2% of total national exports,” reads the plan.
Pereira said that even though Covid-19 and its containment measures triggered an unprecedented crisis in the tourism sector, it still offers significant opportunities for an economy with weak growth and high unemployment. In her budget speech delivered to the mini-plenary of the National Assembly in July, Kubayi-Ngubane said the tourism sector may have lost an estimated R54.2 billion in output in the three months between mid-March and the end of May owing to travel and leisure restrictions
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