OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Wednesday 6.05pm
SOUTH Africa’s exports into Africa now total some R20-billion a year — an expansion of 335% since 1992 when trade sanctions against South Africa were lifted.
The report, compiled by research Whitehouse and Associates for South Africa’s export promotion conference (Saitex) to be held in October, shows that most of South Africa’s export trade is in manufactured goods. The figures however exclude exports to partners in the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) that comprise Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland.
It is not all good news. The figures also show a sharp slowdown in the growth of this trade in the last three years. In 1995, the export trade had grown by 61% from 1992, while in 1996 the figure stood at only a 27% increase.
In 1997 export trade grew by only 11% and last year a mere three% growth was recorded.
This decline, according to the report, was partly because of the worldwide recession and also because of the unresolved trade dispute with South Africa’s main neighbouring market of Zimbabwe.
The trade dispute between the two countries, it said, revolves around the trade deficit which favours South Africa whereby Zimbabwe imports goods worth about $25-million per annum from SA, while South Africa imports from Zimbabwe, goods worth only about $75-million. The report said that there was a fall last year of 15% in South Africa’s imports from the rest of Africa, which is “bound to create political tensions within the region”. — IRIN