TOURISM EQUITY FUND: DEPARTMENT ISSUES STATEMENT ON STATUS OF APPLICATIONS

TOURISM EQUITY FUND: DEPARTMENT ISSUES STATEMENT ON STATUS OF APPLICATIONS

• 21 December 2023
• Tourism
• SA Legal Academy

The Department of Tourism has issued a media statement on the status of applications for financial support from the revised Tourism Equity Fund, which reopened on 6 November 2023. This is noting:

• Cabinet support for the amended qualifying criteria – pegging the broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) ownership target at 30%, and that
• when the fund was launched in 2021, its then-51% B-BBEE ownership target became the focus of a protracted dispute eventually settled out of court nearly two years later. The fund was suspended throughout that period.

It is still not clear what has happened to applications for assistance submitted before the fund was suspended. This despite a 5 October 2023 press release quoting Tourism Minister Patricia de Lille as having undertaken to ‘provide clarity on previous Tourism Equity Fund applications’. The only reference to those applications appears at the foot of page dedicated to the revised fund on the department‘s website, where ‘applicants (including previous applicants) are encouraged to submit new applications to align with the new qualifying criteria‘.

Somewhat confusingly, the website still features a home page banner announcing that the ‘Tourism Transformation Fund’ is open for applications – leading to a page dedicated to that fund, with applications open from 1 October 2021.

• 20 December 2023 media statement 
• 5 October 2023 media statement
• revised Tourism Equity Fund
• suspended ‘transformation fund’
• 5 October 2023 SA Legal Academy report

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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