Walter Mzembi
TOURISM and Hospitality Industry Minister, Walter Mzembi says at least US$200 million is required by the country’s tourism sector to retool and re-kit tourism products.
Zimbabwe’s tourism infrastructure faces stiff competition in the Southern African Development Community region following a decade-long economic crisis that ended in 2009 when the country adopted a multi-currency regime, with the United States of America dollar as the anchor currency.
The economic slump impacted negatively on the state of infrastructure in the tourism sector.
Mzembi, who was last month re-elected to the position of chairman of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation regional commission for Africa, reiterated that the tourism sector was capital intense and desperately required a revolving fund for borrowing by players for their development.
Such funding would unlock the value of tourism and help the sector achieve the US$5 billion tourism revenue target.
“The sector requires a minimum of US$200 million a revolving fund to enable it to retool the tourism product,” Mzembi told the Financial Gazette’s Companies & Markets.
The country’s economy is experiencing a tight liquidity crunch, which has made it very difficult for the local banks to mobilise funds for on-lending to the tourism sector.
In fact, lines of credit are drying up due to the current economic condition.
To kick start the establishment of the revolving fund, government could put seed money, which local banks could match. Government could also guarantee the facility with regional co-operating partners, he suggested.
Tourism in Zimbabwe has been through tough times and the sector’s performance remains well below what it should be in relation to its natural and cultural tourism resources.
The sanctions imposed to Zimbabwe by the West following the country’s land reform programme of the year 2000 dealt a heavy blow on the country’s tourism.
The country received bad publicity after expropriation of white-owned farms and the violence the ensued, which was exacerbated by political violence during subsequent years.
The political and economic situation resulted in arrivals from the country’s traditional overseas source markets of the West declining.
Although African arrivals from the North persisted during the period, these were mainly in transit to South Africa and accounted for very little income to the sector.
Mzembi said: “A comparison of the 1999 international arrivals into Zimbabwe and that of 2013 shows that overseas arrivals decreased by almost 50 percent. Whilst overseas tourists spend as much as US$1 500 per arrival, arrivals from Africa are mostly in transit to South Africa where they spend most of their money in that country’s hotels and lodges as well as shopping.
He added: “Travellers from the north transiting through Zimbabwe tend to spend their nights with relatives or sleep in their vehicles and indulge in very little, if any expenditure. Their average spend is US$250.”
At its peak in 1999, the country received 27 percent of its international tourists from high spending overseas markets such as the United States of America and the United Kingdom and the balance of 73 percent from Africa. Now, only about 14 percent is from overseas markets.
Zimbabwe has several tourist attractions that include the Victoria Falls, Hwange National Park, Great Zimbabwe, Matopo Hills and many others in the Eastern Highlands.