Malusi Gigaba hits back at visa regulation critics

Source: Lynley Donnelly – Mail & Guardian, 28/09/2015

The home affairs minister has insisted that it is naive to blame
falling tourism numbers solely on South Africa's new visa regulations.



Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba came out swinging at the critics
of South Africa`s visa regulations who blame the immigration rules for
declining rates of tourism to South Africa.


On Sunday, he criticised the local tourism sector for not doing enough
to sell South Africa as a destination for visitors, adding that other
factors, including a constrained global economy, had also contributed
to the decline of tourism numbers.


Gigaba stopped short of outright criticism of the South African
Reserve Bank – the latest organisation to raise concerns about the
effects the regulations were having on tourism figures.


Gigaba said: "That the number of travellers dropped because of the new
visa regulations is always an opinion. And the Reserve Bank is
entitled to its opinion and also entitled to be wrong."


He was answering questions on Sunday during a media briefing by the
state`s governance and administration cluster.


The new visa regulations, among a number of changes made to
immigration regulation, require children traveling to and from South
Africa to carry an unabridged birth certificate. They also require
foreign travellers seeking to obtain visas to South Africa to apply in
person and provide biometric data.


Cooked-up figures
The opposition to the new visa regulations had been based on "lies and
cooked-up figures and surveys that have had no credibility whatsoever"
Gigaba said.


But in its latest quarterly bulletin – a publication that the bank
releases four times a year and that provides critical and highly
trusted data on the country`s economy – the Reserve Bank said large
reductions in dividend and travel receipts, probably related to
stricter South African visa regulations, had implications for South
Africa`s balance of payments.


The trade balance, which forms part of the current account and
measures a country`s imports and exports with the rest of the world,
had seen a much-needed improvement in the second quarter of 2015
according to the bank.


But large reductions, including on the services account, driven by
declines in travel receipts, had offset these improvements it noted.
Spending by tourists in South Africa accounts for almost 95% of the
"travel receipts" item, the largest revenue component in the services
account of South Africa`s balance of payments according to the bank.



"The rate of increase in travel receipts in the first half of 2015
slowed notably when compared with the corresponding period in 2014
amid a decline in the number of tourists visiting South Africa," the
bank said in the bulletin.


"The decline in tourist numbers could, inter alia, be ascribed to new
legislation requiring that visitors travelling with a minor should be
in possession of an unabridged birth certificate from 1 June 2015."



The bank said that the number of children younger than 18 years
constitutes a sizeable portion of tourists in South Africa.


"Relative to the total number of tourists, the number of children
dropped from 7.3% in 2014 to 6.4% in the first five months of 2015,
the Bank said.


"A further analysis indicates that although the ratio deteriorated for
both the overseas and African regions, overseas tourists continued to
display a higher concentration of children. This could suggest that
overseas tourists are more inclined to travel together as families
and, as such, could be more affected by the aforementioned
administrative arrangements."


According to the bank preliminary estimations suggested that travel
receipts declined by 9% in the second quarter of 2015.


"Given the growing importance and contribution of the tourism sector
to overall domestic economic activity, a deterioration in the level of
travel receipts could contribute to a further widening of the deficit
on the services, income and current transfer account," it added.



But Gigaba said that the department was not averse to the issues and
concerns that have been raised.


Constructive proposals to mitigate the potential unintended
consequences of the new regulations had been made in the
inter-ministerial committee on migration, chaired by Deputy President
Cyril Ramaphosa.


The process was "at an advanced stage" Gigaba said, but he would not
be drawn on what proposals had been put forward, deferring to the
presidency to make an announcement on the issue.


The figures from the reserve bank followed an outcry from tourism
industry bodies regarding the effect of the new regulations on the
sector.


A study done on behalf of the Tourism Business Council of South
Africa, by advisory firm Grant Thornton, estimated that in 2015, the
regulations would result in a total net loss to South Africa`s gross
domestic product of around R4.1-billion.


More recently, local airlines have noted the impact of the regulations
on their businesses. Comair said in its recent results that it had
seen a marked decrease of passenger numbers on its regional routes to
Mauritius, Windhoek and Victoria Falls, which it attributed to the
visa rules. The airline owns budget airline kulula.com and is the
operator for British Airways locally.


The changes to the immigration regulations, some of which came into
effect last year also extended to the provision of work permits for
foreign workers.


Business Day reported recently that Indian industrial giant Tata was
considering basing some of its key personnel in Tanzania rather than
South Africa, due to the difficulty in obtaining work permits for its
management staff.


Undeterred
Gigaba said that the department had never claimed that the regulations
would not affect visitor numbers.


"We said we expect that within the first year of the introduction of
these new visa regulations, the figures may drop when people begin to
comply and learn to understand what our regulations are about," he
said.


He said that as travellers become informed about the requirements the
figures were expected to pick up again.


In addition, he criticised the tourism sector for not doing enough to
sell South Africa on the basis of what it had to offer visitors,
rather than as a destination with lax travel regulations.


"I think our tourism sector has not been selling South Africa as well
as they should [have]," he said.


"They should be selling the country on the basis of what it offers
travellers not on the basis that its easy for somebody to enter South
Africa with a child, unnoticed."


He said other factors such as fears over the spread of Ebola from West
Africa to other parts of the continent have contributed to declines in
traveller numbers, noting that China had issued a communiqué to its
citizens, warning against travelling to any African country during the
outbreak.


Other concerns such as the security threats from militants in both
Eastern Africa as well as Nigeria, had also impacted on the foreign
travellers views of the continent as a whole he added.


The global economy also remained very constrained he said.


All of these other issues had been neglected and the emphasis placed
on the "body of visa regulations", which had received all the blame
for the challenges facing the tourism sector Gigaba said.