Hon Deputy Speaker, in referring the policy objectives of the socio economic development of South Africa in enhancing foreign relations and co- operations, it remains vital that South Africa formulates, apply and implement foreign policy that is aligned with the domestic priorities.
The departmental strategic objectives have been formulated to its credit and are being largely successfully implemented. Of prime concern to the IFP, remains the high number of missions currently operating around the world. While we accept the need for an expanded international footprint, we must also be cautious of our budget and cut our fiscal cloth accordingly.
Strategic for rain missions must be prioritised and audited conducted whereby those missions that are found
not be advantageous to South Africa in respect of its domestic priorities, in other words, where the opportunity costs in respect of expense incurred in running this mission is more than the gains from having such missions should be closed. Strategic and mechanisms for regional and continental political and economic intervention must be implemented and target reached in alignment with our National Development Plan, NDP.
Investment into South Africa must remain a key priority and government must do all it can within its power to ease the fear of investors as regards to stability of South Africa in a political, social and economic context. Tourism is an important driver of economic growth and if you wish to reach the stated goals of our President in raising a number of tourists in South Africa to 21 million by 2030, we must create a more tourist friendly, safe and secure domestic environment. And these are the lessons that we can learn from other countries around the world that also had to deal with spiralling level of criminal activities within their boarders. The IFP supports the report. [Time expired.]