According to the report, Tata International has decided to base some of its key personnel in Tanzania because of the long delay in getting visas and work permits for its senior managers in SA.
`We are finding it increasingly time consuming to get visas for our managers,” MD, Noel Tata, was quoted as saying. “We believe that for a supervisory business across Africa, we ought to be granted faster, quicker and more employment visas to enable us to grow the business the way we should.`
South Africa lost as much as R2.6 billion (€168.49m) in gross domestic product and R886 million (€57.42m) in direct tourism spend in 2014 according a research report by Grant Thornton, commissioned by the Tourism Business Council of South Africa.
An inter-ministerial committee is reviewing the implementation of the regulations and Minister of Tourism, Derek Hanekom, said last week that he was hopeful that, in the next few weeks, the inter-ministerial committee would announce some adjustments to the regulations that would be more favourable to the tourism sector and other investments.