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THE Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) says it expects an increase in annual earnings to $1.5 billion this year from $827 million recorded last year on the back of improved international sentiment.

This is despite the financial constraints that have resulted in the authority’s failure to participate at a number of major global travel market events.

ZTA chief executive Karikoga Kaseke on Friday said the country had registered improvement on the World Economic Forum’s Travel and Tourism Competiveness Index (TTCI), which would have a positive bearing on arrivals.

The TTCI measures a set of factors and policies that enable the sustainable development of the travel and tourism sector.

Zimbabwe improved from position 136 in 2010 to 115 out of 141 countries in 2015.

The rankings were done in terms of four major pillars namely enabling environment, travel and tourism policy and enabling conditions, infrastructure, natural and cultural resources.

Zimbabwe’s tourist arrivals increased by 2.6 percent to 1,880,028 in 2014 from 1,832,583 recorded the previous year, but the figure was still below the overall regional growth of seven percent.

Last year, the country recorded a marginal three percent decline in total annual earnings to $827 million from $856 million in 2013.

“Our operations have been hamstrung because we’re operating on a very tight budget and we’ve had to be innovative. Our target is $1.5 billion,” he said.

“We cancelled a lot of shows, but others (from southern Africa) were there. That has put a big challenge on our mandate. As such we’ve suspended most of our programmes.”

While the $1.5 billion figure appears impressive under prevailing circumstances, it is a far cry to the $15 billion generated by South Africa last year after its government funded tourism to the tune of $204 million at national level while each province got $10 million.

Kaseke said ZTA only received $585,000 under the 2015 national budget as the government was facing funding limitations.

The figure falls short of the $35 million ZTA had requested from Treasury, which it was asked to revise downwards to $20 million, but only received just over half a million dollars in the end.

This year South Africa allocated $160 million to tourism and $15 million to each province. — Harare Bureau/Wires