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Mpumalanga Business 2017 edition

  • Text
  • Development
  • Energy
  • Renewable
  • Tourism
  • Network
  • Government
  • Business
  • Economy
  • Africa
  • Africa
  • Investment
  • Business
  • Mpumalanga
  • Province
  • Provincial
  • Mbombela
  • Banking
  • African
  • Mining
Mpumalanga Business 2017 is the seventh edition of this highly successful publication that has since its launch in 2008 established itself as the premier business and investment guide to Mpumalanga Province. Supported and utilised by the Mpumalanga Economic Growth Agency (MEGA), Mpumalanga Business is unique as a business journal that focuses exclusively on Mpumalanga.

OVERVIEW Tourism

OVERVIEW Tourism Mpumalanga regularly attracts more than a million tourists. Geologists believe that the mountains of Makhonjwa hold clues to the earliest history of earth. Geological tourism is a new concept that could find rich soil in Mpumalanga. The Makhonjwa Mountains around Barberton are unique and important in the history of gold mining. The Makhonjwa Mountainland area is on South Africa’s UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List and the tourist offering near Barberton has been branded the Genesis Route. This is among the many new initiatives that aim to leverage Mpumalanga’s already well-established and successful tourism sector, in order to attract new visitors to the province. The National Development Plan has identified tourism as a sector that can spark rural growth, create jobs at a good rate and stimulate the creation of new businesses. SECTOR INSIGHT Mpumalanga is receiving new visitors from Africa. • The Makhonjwa Mountain Range has been nominated as a World Heritage Site. South Africa received 8.9-million foreign tourists in 2015 and they collectively spent MPUMALANGA BUSINESS 2017 70

OVERVIEW R68.2-billion. Tourism accounts for 3% of South Africa’s gross domestic product and there are about 655 609 jobs in the sector (Treasury). The Provincial Government of Mpumalanga, which owns many tourism assets in the province, intends to use the procurement chain to support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and co-operatives. More than a million tourists visit the province every year. In 2015 the figure rose to 1.3-million (up from 1.1-million in the previous two years), with the increase ascribed to new African visitors. No province spends more on promoting and supporting its tourism than Mpumalanga, with the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency receiving R311-million for its activities in the latest budget cycle. Tsogo Sun has six hotels in the province, ranging from two EasyStays to The Ridge, which is attached to the Graceland Hotel Casino and Country Club in Secunda. Protea Hotels by Marriott also has six properties in Mpumalanga, including Protea Hotel Kruger Gate. Forever Resorts has a big presence in the province, catering to many caravans and campers and holiday-makers wanting to stay in chalets. There is also a four-star Forever Resorts Mount Sheba. Provincial reserves and dams Mpumalanga has approximately 70 game and nature reserves, most of which are private and the provincial parks board looks after 13. The landscape ranges from the forested valleys and streams of the northeast, the large commercial forests and dramatic cliffs on the edge of the escarpment, to the bushveld, home to the rare wattled crane and many other varieties of birds. Verloren Valei Nature Reserve is another beautiful site that is an internationally recognised wetland. High in the mountains is one of the last surviving groups of black mountain leopards living in the wild. The Songimvelo Game Reserve is owned

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