The visiting South African home minister M. Gigaba says, South Africa is very keen to use latest information technology (IT) to facilitate and hasten the issuance of visa to Indians in order to attract tourists and businesses from India to South Africa.
The minister on Thursday says South Africa has the best infrastructure with facilities to cater any business from India in the whole Africa. The country also benefit from its abundant natural resources.
South Africa being part of BRICS group it has provided a 10 year multi entry visa to meet the multiple needs of Indian businesses and we are also looking for employing latest technologies to facilitate and making much easier visa issuance process for tourist and any businessmen.
As India being the third largest market of Asia, and seventh in overall global for South Africa. We expect to make changes in visa regulations to boost the inflow of tourists and businesses from India.
Explaining the reasons behind the introduction of new visa regulations is to have a safe and secure system to prevent any abuse of the immigration policies. We expect a major increase of visitors from India to South Africa, even if it dips in the first year of introducing new visa regulations, it won't be a problem. As it takes the time to adjust.
South Africa had expressed its interest to be included and benefited from India’s e-visa scheme, seeking to increase tourism and business with India.
Meanwhile, South Africa mulls to introduce the tourist visas with a validity of three years to bolster the tourist inflow from India. Indians currently can access a tourist visa for South Africa with validity for 30 days only.
