Deputy Speaker, on behalf of the Minister who is not around and not in the country, I will be answer those questions on her behalf. The first question is 191 and the response that we are giving to the question is that, South Africa
has not developed a blueprint of support in the investment facilitation and trade promotion of small-scale tourism initiatives.
However, the majority of businesses in our country are small businesses. The Department of Tourism has put in place mechanisms to provide support of such businesses in order for them to succeed. These mechanisms include access to finance, market access support and business incubation.
This is done through various programmes such as the Tourism Incentive Program which provides incentives to enterprises through the Market Access Support Programme, the Tourism Grading Support Programme, the Green Tourism Incentive Programme and the Tourism Transformation Fund.
The department's enterprise development programmes give support to different small, macro and medium enterprises, SMMEs, across the tourism value chain. The extent of the success of these initiatives will only be ascertained in the medium-to long-term.
Thus far, small, black-owned tourism businesses, some of which are in our rural areas and which ordinarily would not have had an international market access or exposure thereof, have been supported
the Tourism Incentive Programme and have indicated positive outcomes of their engagement with the international trade resulting in securing bookings to South Africa.
Just to illustrate a point, the evaluation of the report on business commitment post-support yields that the return of investment ratio to the market access support ranges from 6:1 to 10:1 since its inception.
Since its inception we have got 432 enterprises across the country that we have been supporting at a cost of a minimum of R82 800 each totalling to about R35,7 million thus the return on investment estimates between R214 million to R357 million. One of the challenges we have set for the department is to ensure that there is an abundance of high-quality products that emerging tour operators can position themselves both globally and in the domestic market.
Our incubation programmes are active in the North West, Mpumalanga, Limpopo and Northern Cape provinces. The department will also be having engagements with the industry on their supplier development role when it comes to small operators. I have no doubt that they will work because we are working together with the Tourism Broad- Based Black Economic Empowerment Charter Council, in this regard.
The Tourism Transformation Fund, run in partnership with the National Empowerment Fund, NEF, has registered some increase in the number of successful applicants for capital project finance. To date, 15 black-owned projects with a total value of about R170 million of which R43 million is a grant that has been approved and with about R13 million already disbursed and already working on the ground.
These are proof that business projects are mainly thus far located in KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Northern Cape, Gauteng and in Limpopo. However, the department is currently in the process of reviewing the various incentives mechanisms to ensure that we maximise on the intended transformation impact. These will not only involve small business initiatives but it will also extend to facilitate them so that they are able to graduate from being small to being big businesses. Thank you very much. [Applause.]