MONDAY, 15 OCTOBER 2001: Exclusive tourism investment sites in the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park are currently being offered to the private sector via a competitive bidding process. The opportunities range from beach resorts to boutique hotels and game lodges.

As part of this initiative, the South African government, together with the IDC, the DBSA and Khula, today announced a unique package of funding incentives aimed at generating economic growth through tourism in the huge wetland park. The package includes investment grants, concessionary finance, empowerment equity funds and training grant incentives.

“Our end goal is to create new jobs and access to economic opportunity in a region characterised by enormous natural attraction, yet pressing economic hardship,” said Trade and Industry Minister Alec Erwin at a briefing in Johannesburg today to launch the incentive scheme.

“In providing this meaningful and attractive package of incentives we are lowering the barriers to tourism investments in the St Lucia Park. By making use of the incentives, there will be a substantial effect on investment returns. We have created a one-stop shop to make sure these benefits flow quickly from DTI, the DBSA, IDC and Khula to private-sector investors.

“The impact of these incentives on projects is intended to lower the fixed overheads of tourism operations in the first three crucial years of their development, by lowering debt repayment obligations in real terms in the short-term and over the life of the project,” said Erwin.

Erwin stressed the incentive drive was aimed at bringing ordinary residents of Maputaland into joint ventures and economic partnerships with investors from the commercial sector, thus helping to even out the economic inequalities the region has inherited from apartheid.

The investment drive is part of government’s commitment through the Lubombo Spatial Development Initiative to convert the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park into a flagship for economic growth and job creation through responsible forms of tourism investment.