Southern Africa’s visa openness registered 29%, compared with a global average of 39%, according to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) Visa Openness Report. The figure indicates the percentage of the world’s population that can travel to a destination without obtaining a traditional visa prior to departure. At present, 71% of the world’s population require a visa prior to travelling to Southern Africa.
The UNWTO report stated that emerging economies continued to be more open compared with advanced economies: South-East Asia recorded an openness score of 51%; East Africa, 48%; and the Caribbean and Oceania recorded 43%. The most restrictive sub-regions include Central Africa at 5%; North Africa at 16%; and North America 15%. The Americas recorded an openness score of 37%, while Europe recorded 24%.
David Frost, SATSA CEO, said South Africa should improve its visa regime and look to develop reciprocal relationships with countries. “South Africa must also credit travellers who have been through more rigorous visa processes, such as applying for and receiving a US or Schengen visa, and allow those travellers in more easily.”
Ross Kennedy, Chief Executive at Africa Albida Tourism, and Onne Vegter, Director at Wild Wings Safaris, said there was huge potential for African countries to advance travel facilitation as a means to promote tourism. Vegter said South Africa especially could benefit greatly from visa openness. He argues that an open visa policy would allow more economic growth and job creation as a result of increased tourism from key source markets.
UNWTO Secretary-General, Taleb Rifai, argued that security challenges should not be a deterrent to advancing visa facilitation. “On the contrary, enhancing security and facilitating tourism travel should always go hand in hand.” Vegter echoed this sentiment. “Even though security is important and illegal immigration remains a valid concern, a rigid or unnecessarily harsh visa policy does far more harm than good,” he said.
Frost agreed and said visas were an impediment to tourists and the more South Africa could do to reduce this, the better. He added that South Africa could learn from India. Even though the country had fallen victim to terror attacks, India had opened its borders by implementing an eVisa programme and was creating visas on arrival for about 32 countries.
Other Southern African countries appear to be making strides towards visa openness. Kennedy said the arrival of the KAZA UniVisa, which could later become an SADC UniVisa, would create positive, user-friendly engagement with travellers to Southern Africa.
“In Zimbabwe, we are aware that government is reviewing its visa regime, whereby it is hoped that a number of countries requiring a visa on arrival will be reviewed to ‘no visa required’ and further countries requiring a visa prior to travel will be moved to ‘visas on arrival’,” said Kennedy.
– See more at: http://www.tourismupdate.co.za/Home/Detail?articleId=105640#sthash.0jPm8soN.tMwZbfqU.dpuf
Namibia’s president has made his ministers’ performance agreements public If you haven’t already fallen in love with Nam’s no-nonsense ‘new’ president, here’s one more reason you should… he’s making all his ministers’ performance expectations public for all Namibians to see. By Gerhard Jacobs – January 25, 2016
As part of president Geingob’s relentless efforts to root out corruption and create a culture of transparent governance in Namibia; his prime minister recently announced that anyone will be able to have a look at all cabinet minsters’ performance agreements at his office.
Last year we reported that in his first few weeks of being president, Geingob told his parliament that it certainly won’t be business as usual and that anyone who wanted to serve in his government would have to choose between serving the people and serving themselves. Geingob warned his government that no-one will be allowed to have any businesses on the side and that he’d come down on corrupt officials like a tonne of bricks.
Now it looks like he really is taking them to task. Every one of Geingob’s ministers have committed themselves to performance based outcomes that the Namibian public can now hold them to; these include:
Permanent secretaries are expected to submit quarterly reports on the progress of their respective ministry and the relevant ministers will then send their progress reports to Geingob a month before the year ends.
Geingob will then hold an evaluation session with each minister after two months.
According to The Namibian, some of the agreements are a bit vague, but most of themclearly set out what is expected of the ministers:
These agreements were signed off by Geingob with Prime Minister Saara Kuugongelwa as witness, last year October.
Imagine if we could do this here in South Africa… just imagine.
Image Credits:Getty
http://www.thesouthafrican.com/namibias-president-has-made-his-ministers-performance-agreements-public/
Southern Africa lags in global visa openness – report 21 Jan 2016
Southern Africa’s visa openness registered 29%, compared with a global average of 39%, according to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) Visa Openness Report. The figure indicates the percentage of the world’s population that can travel to a destination without obtaining a traditional visa prior to departure. At present, 71% of the world’s population require a visa prior to travelling to Southern Africa.
The UNWTO report stated that emerging economies continued to be more open compared with advanced economies: South-East Asia recorded an openness score of 51%; East Africa, 48%; and the Caribbean and Oceania recorded 43%. The most restrictive sub-regions include Central Africa at 5%; North Africa at 16%; and North America 15%. The Americas recorded an openness score of 37%, while Europe recorded 24%.
David Frost, SATSA CEO, said South Africa should improve its visa regime and look to develop reciprocal relationships with countries. “South Africa must also credit travellers who have been through more rigorous visa processes, such as applying for and receiving a US or Schengen visa, and allow those travellers in more easily.”
Ross Kennedy, Chief Executive at Africa Albida Tourism, and Onne Vegter, Director at Wild Wings Safaris, said there was huge potential for African countries to advance travel facilitation as a means to promote tourism. Vegter said South Africa especially could benefit greatly from visa openness. He argues that an open visa policy would allow more economic growth and job creation as a result of increased tourism from key source markets.
UNWTO Secretary-General, Taleb Rifai, argued that security challenges should not be a deterrent to advancing visa facilitation. “On the contrary, enhancing security and facilitating tourism travel should always go hand in hand.” Vegter echoed this sentiment. “Even though security is important and illegal immigration remains a valid concern, a rigid or unnecessarily harsh visa policy does far more harm than good,” he said.
Frost agreed and said visas were an impediment to tourists and the more South Africa could do to reduce this, the better. He added that South Africa could learn from India. Even though the country had fallen victim to terror attacks, India had opened its borders by implementing an eVisa programme and was creating visas on arrival for about 32 countries.
Other Southern African countries appear to be making strides towards visa openness. Kennedy said the arrival of the KAZA UniVisa, which could later become an SADC UniVisa, would create positive, user-friendly engagement with travellers to Southern Africa.
“In Zimbabwe, we are aware that government is reviewing its visa regime, whereby it is hoped that a number of countries requiring a visa on arrival will be reviewed to ‘no visa required’ and further countries requiring a visa prior to travel will be moved to ‘visas on arrival’,” said Kennedy.
– See more at: http://www.tourismupdate.co.za/Home/Detail?articleId=105640#sthash.0jPm8soN.tMwZbfqU.dpuf
Insight into the Angola Rental Market – January 2016.
Contributed by our consultant on the ground in Luanda – Inyene Udoyen
As we all know the price of oil has gone down dramatically over the last year and our clients have expressed interest in the effect this is having on the expat rental market in Angola focussing on the following questions:
Has the demand gone down and is there currently a surplus of available properties and, if so, how has this affected the rental price?
For those expats that are in rented accommodation already; when it comes to renewals of leases, is there an opportunity there to negotiate a lower rent before renewing the contract?
Clients are expecting the rental costs to go down when the demand is not as high as it once was; is this happening or not?
Rental prices have come down and there will be a fair amount of availability soon. This month we are seeing a lot of changes in the volume of expat rentals. Many companies have either shut down completely or have cut the amount of staff drastically to cut costs. In the city prices have been coming down over the past year or so and this has sparked a lot of movement with many either renegotiating their contracts or moving to better quality accommodation for the same budget. Several major changes have affected the market:
• Introduction of 15% urban property tax (IPU) 2 years ago and consequent enforcement in companies with organized accounting meant landlords tended to put 15% on top of their original asking price.
• Recent law to limit advance payments to between 2-6 months.
• Recent law that all payment should be made in kwanzas and now only non-residents can quote in dollars in contracts.
• Recent banking restrictions locally mean that it is very hard to get dollars out of the bank even if one has deposits.
• Large gap between official exchange rate ($1:160) and actual rate at which forex can be bought ($1:300+ at bureau de change).
I mention these issues because they have affected what would be a basic drop in prices by muddying the waters somewhat. So although prices have gone down in global terms the asking prices have been affected by these issues and vary greatly. First of all for international clients who can still pay in USD outside the country we can definitely negotiate very good rates as everyone prefers this option. Payment locally in USD now does not hold as much appeal as previously as having the money in your account does not mean you can easily access it. A lot of rentals are still quoted in dollars at the official exchange rate to act as a basic hedge against the devaluing kwanza. Now there is a move to use only kwanzas but the landlords still think in dollars and not knowing where the kwanza will end up they have to take a guess and are mostly using rates somewhere between the official and reality.
Still overall rental rates are definitely down and most of our clients are renegotiating their contracts downwards and Sonangol (Sonangol is a parastatal that oversees petroleum and natural gas production in Angola. The company is responsible for the management of oil and gas reserves in Angola) has cut costs as well which means they may not approve higher costs as readily as before. This year they hope to gradually move to only referencing kwanza with no mention of dollars. Right now there is lot of activity as many companies are consolidating accommodations to save on other costs such as security and transport i.e putting all their staff in one building or complex. A lot of clients that are kwanza-rich and are here for the long-term are buying their properties rather than renting because prices are lower, people are desperate and it’s better than having the money devalue in the bank. Locals are also buying property for this very same reason.
We are also doing a lot of basic factoring now for our clients who can still pay outside the country which allows them to get a lot more out of their contracts e.g for the same price in dollars we pay the rent locally but can include whatever services they need, usually TV/internet, maid, furnishing…etc.
There is still not a surplus of new apartments in the city centre for now, but this is because there are 5-7 new buildings not on the market yet. Once these come online there will definitely be a surplus of apartments in new buildings in the city which should bring the prices down, however, given current trends their are likely to spark more consolidation with companies taking the advantage of putting their staff in new buildings to save the inherent maintenance and security costs associated with older buildings. In fact they are only empty because the owners have taken loans to build them and are angling to sell/rent them in their entirety to one entity, which until last year was a great and viable business model.
Talatona also has a reasonable amount of properties available right now and prices have come down considerably but it is still not the ghost town people expect as many have taken advantage of this dip to move in there from further out and some companies to consolidate their operations and staff dispersement around Talatona instead of the city or further out.
So to summarize:
Prices have come down about 20%.
Kwanza has devalued 16% since 1 January and is set to devalue more.
If you can pay in USD outside then prices have actually come down somewhere in the region of 40+%.
Landlords are now accepting 2-6 months payment frequency.
Thousands of foreign entrepreneurs would flock into South Africa – if only they could.
Tracy du Plessis from Relocation Africa was interviewed by The Times for comment
Mudslinging between government and immigration firms over bureaucracy and alleged profiteering are hindering the influx of immigrants, many of whom have critical skills.
The alleged blocking of immigrants must be balanced with the , country’s interests, the government says.
The immigration policies imposed by the South African government at the end of 2014 have drawn sharp criticism. But the government says it is targeting dodgy immigration lawyers.
For years immigration firms have cried foul over issues, such as immigrants wanting to open businesses in South Africa having to have R5-million and 60% of their staff having to be South Africans.
They are also upset about the department’s critical skills visa list.
Tracy du Plessis, Forum of Immigration Practitioners vice-chairman, said the 2014 amended Immigration Act made it difficult for foreign nationals to work in the country.
There is no communication on recommendations for a business visa applicant until after the application is made.
“The department’s reasoning is to stop fraud,” Du Plessis said.
Immigration expert Leon Isaacson of Global Migration SA said there were inconsistencies in processing visas, especially critical skills visas.
“The list was drawn up in haste. Professions, such as maths and science teachers, which the country has a 60000 to 80000 shortfall of, are not included.”
Bjorn van Niekerk, Integrated-Immigration director, said sections of the immigration legislation needed reviewing.
“There are serious barriers, including the massive increase in incorrect adjudications and baseless rejections.”
Home Affairs spokesman Mayihlome Tshwete said “middle-men” were misinterpreting policies aimed at assisting immigrants.
“There is a lot of corruption. We have lawyers under investigation. In the past people came to establish phantom companies, sometimes to launder money. We had to change our policies.”
http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2016/01/25/Stop-block-on-foreigners