SAT, the marketing agency on behalf of government globally confirmed on Monday, that they are in discussions with National Treasury for added budget, although no exact details on how much SAT are asking from Treasury.
The agency’s budget rose from R880m last year to R997m this year.
According to Tom Bouwer, chief financial officer at SAT, they would meet with the Treasury this week to request more funding to be able to compete in the current tough environment.
In 1994 the exchange rate was R3.75 to the dollar, but 21 years later, the exchange rate was more than R11 to the dollar, hence the rand’s slide on its business.
During a presentation to the Portfolio on Tourism, SA Tourism also told MPs that they want to increase tourism’s contribution to the local economy from R99.5 billion this year to R155bn by 2020.
Due to the sensitivity of the rand, we hope funding would be attended to as a matter of urgency so we could compete with other countries, says one chief executive at one of the provincial tourism agencies, whose identity has been withheld.
