Archana Sharma – New Delhi
The South African High Commission is association with South African Tourism recently organised the first Tourism and Investment Conference in New Delhi in an effort to promote investment opportunities in South Africa. Elaborating on this, Stefanus Botes, economic minister counsellor, South African High Commission, stated, “India is the fifth largest trading partner for South Africa and tourism is a major segment for growth with about 9.5 per cent contribution to the GDP.” He highlighted three major areas of South Africa that are being promoted for investment opportunities – Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo.
Talking about India as a major source market, M Mogale, deputy high commissioner in India, stated, “India is the third largest outbound market in Asia and the number of Indians travelling overseas is set to rise from around 15 million to 50 million by 2020, enabling us to attract Indian investors to explore avenues in the tourism sector.” He added that though they have heavily invested in all the nine provinces for infrastructure and connectivity, private segment investments will enable faster development.
While comparing the tourism scenario from 1994 to the present state, Hanneli Slabber, country head, South African Tourism, stated that by 2020, South Africa will be able to host 18 million domestic tourist. Elaborating on air connectivity, Sajid Khan, country manager, India, South African Airways, announced that the codeshare agreement with Etihad and Jet Airways will come in effect from March 29, 2015. “Even though the travel time will increase to 10 hours from eight due to the re-route through Abu Dhabi, the codeshare will lead to better flight connectivity to Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai and Trivandrum.”
Furthermore, the new immigration policy put to effect in May 2014, has made it easier for Indians to get study permit, tourist visa and residence permit.