SOUTH African National Parks has received a R350m boost over the medium term to "acquire and upgrade tourism infrastructure".

The additional funds were announced during the Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan's budget speech yesterday and aimed at increasing capacity from 4.5m visitors in 2011/2012 to a target of 4.7m by 2014/15.

Meanwhile the budget allocated to the Ministry of Tourism was increased by 8% from R1.265bn in the 2011/2012 budget to R1.367bn in the 2012/2013 budget.

No specific announcements were made regarding tourism and travel other than that the government would be investigating the design of a carbon tax and that a policy paper would be published for comment in 2012.