Deputy Speaker, I would like to thank the hon member Bikani for her support for youth training initiatives. One of them is a project to train 800 young chefs this year. We are investing R25 million on this in the first year. We hope that with the subsidy that the Minister of Finance announced for first-time job seekers this will assist in meeting some of the demands in that subsector. With regard to the hospitality sector, we need to do even more to meet future job demands.
We have just announced the foreign tourist arrivals for 2010, and it is indeed good news for the country. We had year-on-year growth of 15,5%, which translated into eight million foreign tourist arrivals last year. This is a narrower category than that of all foreign arrivals.
If we look at the World Cup, we see it was a good bonus for us. In just June/July last year we had just over 300 000 tourists coming to the World Cup, but even if we subtract the 4% growth that this represented, we still had double-digit growth - 11%. That is really good news for us. The really encouraging news is that we also grew in each and every one of the months for the rest of the year. So, it was not only in the months of the World Cup that the country experienced growth.
Apart from growth in our traditional markets, and excellent growth in the emerging markets, the gem in the statistics is from the African air markets. Apart from the land markets, in which we expected some growth, we saw a healthy growth in the African air markets. Thank you, Deputy Speaker. [Applause.]
Madam Deputy Speaker, on a point of order: This is with regard to Rule 105(6) which states that a Minister may not respond for more than two minutes. I want to say that the hon Minister of Energy made a very important statement, and that is why we didn't interrupt her in any way. However, I do want to draw your attention to the fact that, generally speaking, there are certain Ministers who speak a lot longer than they should, and we ask you to apply the Rules properly. Thank you very much.
Order! I think that is true. Moreover, I think it is not only the Ministers who do this, but it is all members. We have Rules that when you prepare your speech, it must not be longer than the specified time. We have really been very accommodating from the Table in this regard. This is something that hon members need to take into consideration when they speak. I'm sure we get the point that the hon member is making, and he is right.