Business organisation Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA) CEO Busi Mavuso says in her weekly newsletter that there were two positive moves last week for two important economic themes that the organisation has long been championing – tourism and infrastructure investment.

She notes that there is progress in both, but that business needs to be pushing for more.

“The biggest economic damage caused by the Covid crisis has been to the hospitality and tourism sector. Thanks to the collapse of both domestic and international travel, these industries have been starved of clients.

“It is one of the most important sectors in that it provides employment to 1.5-million people, a larger proportion of which are low-skilled workers and women compared to the general economy.

“SA Tourism estimates that 87% of those employed in tourism are from a disadvantaged background. So, it is vitally important that we do everything possible to get it back on its feet and eventually back to being a major driver of growth in employment,” Mavuso emphasises.

She says the decision by the UK to remove South Africa from its travel red list was welcome, albeit late.

This means that travellers to the UK from South Africa will no longer need to pay for a State-managed ten-day quarantine in a hotel, upon their return.

“This requirement obviously deterred almost all tourists from the UK, which was our single biggest source market for overseas tourists.

“As an organisation, we had written to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson highlighting the impact of the red-listing on development in Southern Africa but also the business relationships between our two countries. The change will now also allow more normal business travel to resume with one of our biggest trading partners,” Mavuso says.

She notes that while the change has come late, it is still likely in time for the December holiday season, when northern hemisphere tourists visit the region for summer weather.

“It will be important to the many businesses that have effectively been forced to shut down for the past 18 months that they have a good season. I would expect bookings to now spike as British tourists take advantage of the opportunity,” Mavuso posits.

She says that what is important now is how the impacted tourism industry will recover.

“Government has often talked of support measures through the Covid-19 pandemic but its relatively limited support through the Tourism Equity Fund has been stalled in litigation. We need to be doing more to support viable businesses to get back on their feet and big business will be looking to partner with government on interventions to do so,” Mavuso emphasises.

In terms of infrastructure, Mavuso mentions another edition of the Sustainable Infrastructure Development Symposium held last week, spearheaded by President Cyril Ramaphosa.

“There were some impressive announcements of ambitious new infrastructure projects by both the public and private sectors including for the green hydrogen economy.

“BLSA has been a major champion for infrastructure investment and we have been extensively engaged with the public sector to discuss how we can support an improved environment for greater volumes of infrastructure investment,” she acclaims.

Mavuso says that, while the high-profile projects like those discussed at the event are welcome, she is concerned that there is not enough discussion of the wider environment for infrastructure investment.

“A few multibillion-rand investments are good but even better would be if tens of thousands of small companies were all investing in their own infrastructure expansion,” she emphasises.

Moreover, she says this applies to the public sector as well, where there should be many smaller infrastructure projects happening, particularly at local government level, rather than the few high-profile projects.

“Creating the enabling environment for infrastructure investment needs to be a key priority – not only big, headline-grabbing deals. BLSA will continue to work with public sector counterparts to support capacity and contribute thinking on how we can do that,” she says.