With all of the horror stories coming out of Cape Town recently about the spike in violent crime, especially in our tourist hot spots, it’s sometimes easy to forget that we live in an incredible city.

In fact, the V&A Waterfront’s latest economic impact data suggests that we’re home to the most visited destination in South Africa.

According to BusinessTech, the Waterfront is also a massive contributor to our GDP.

In 2018 its contribution to direct GDP was R9.3 billion and R31.5 billion to total GDP, the group said.

“To put this into perspective, on average, between 2003 and 2015, the V&A Waterfront’s contribution to GDP grew by 4.5%, whereas the Western Cape provincial economy grew by 3.5% and the national economy grew by 3.1%,” the group said.

“Since 2002, the accumulated nominal contribution by the V&A Waterfront to GDP has been estimated at R335 billion.

Here’s the breakdown:

Not bad at all, and with new developments underway at the Waterfront, we could be looking at an additional cumulative nominal contribution to GDP of R183 billion by 2026.

In 2018, the V&A completed work on their R300 million Battery Park development.

A new residential development is also planned for the area, and will be developed as part of the Canal District.

It’s nice to see some tourism industry positivity for a change.

[source:businesstech]