Durban - With only about four months to go, the money for the Top Gear Festival has not yet been allocated by the city.
This according to deputy mayor Nomvuzo Shabalala on Thursday, despite the city’s and event organisers’ bold announcement last year of its fourth instalment.
Abruptly raising the matter, and without providing further details, Shabalala told the municipality’s economic development and planning committee, which she also chairs: “We don’t have money for Top Gear.”
However, the city later moved to allay fears that the event would not go ahead. It said money would most likely be found from reallocations in the mid-term budget.
Shabalala had been briefing the committee on a tourism statistics report released this week. The report noted significant gains made by the city’s tourism sector last year and in the past five years. She made the comment after input from councillors Stanley Xulu of the ANC and ACDP councillor Wayne Thring on the statistics.
She said: “I forgot to mention that we don’t have money for Top Gear. We don’t have it... It happens in June. Also the World Routes Forum in September. Those are big events and we need the money.”
City spokesman Thabo Mofokeng later said Shabalala did not mean that the event would not receive city funding, but that they were waiting for the mid-term budget.
He said: “She meant that there are events approved and funded by the municipality at the beginning of the financial year and then there are those approved but not given funding.”
‘UNPRECEDENTED EXPOSURE’
The Top Gear Festival was in the latter category, he said. The unfunded events were considered when the municipality did its mid-term budget.
“It will happen, but we are waiting for the mid-term budget,” he said.
The Top Gear Festival is scheduled for the weekend of 13 and 14 June, and the World Routes Forum is to be held at the Chief Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre from 20-22 September. It will be the first time the forum is held on the African continent.
In June 2014 the municipality’s executive committee announced that it had agreed “in principle” to continue hosting Top Gear, saying it had put the city on the map and given it “unprecedented” exposure.
At the time mayor James Nxumalo said the festival had drawn a 67 000-strong crowd over two days.
He told the committee he had met Economic Development and Tourism MEC Mike Mabuyakhulu to discuss the future of the event after the initial three-year contract had ended.
He did, however, admit that hosting the event had financial implications. In the three years the event was held at the Moses Mabhida Stadium, the city contributed about R12 million a year. Returns on the investment were measured at more than R100 million a year.
Nxumalo had reportedly told the committee he would ask that city manager Sbu Sithole and the treasurer, Krish Kumar, try to find funding for this year as it had not been budgeted for.
The show’s hosts, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, announced dates for this year’s event in a YouTube video clip in November last year.
The Mercury