South Africa's export performance: Determinants of export supply

Abstract

This paper presents both a comparative analysis of South Africa's export structure and performance and an econometric investigation of the determinants of export volumes. The paper finds that the improved growth and diversification of South African manufactured exports during the 1990s lag those of East Asia and a few other resource-based economies. This performance in part reflects relatively low world growth in resource-based products, but factors that affect the profitability of export supply, such as the real effective exchange rate, infrastructure costs, tariff rates and skilled labour, are also shown to be important. Export demand and the ability to compete in the export market on the basis of price are not found to be a major constraint to export growth. © 2006 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2006 Economic Society of South Africa.