This was a brief brainstorming workshop on research methodolgy issues with regards to the motor industry development program.

The annual forum serves as a platform for researchers, policy-makers and other stakeholders to discuss ongoing research and to enter into dialogue on policy-relevant issues resulting from research.

TIPS hosted its seventh annual forum in September 2003 together with the Development Policy Research Unit (DPRU).
This year's forum focussed on South Africa's progress in addressing growth and poverty since democracy and the challenges it still faces in these areas. Key themes included:

• Explaining low economic growth in South Africa in the last decade.
• The changing structure of the South African economy and microeconomic reform.
• Sectors as engines of growth and employment in the last decade.
• Poverty, labour markets and income inequality in the post-aparthed period.
• Privatisation, regulation and competition.

Various prominent South African government figures and academics, as well as international speakers, participated in the Forum, including South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, David Kaplan of UCT, Erik Thorbecke of Cornell University, the University of Toronto's Albert Berry and Rohinton Medhora of the IDRC.

See Annual Forum papers

TIPS is organizing a short course on the Economics of the Environment in Cape Town from the 5th to the 9th of May 2003
The Course will be taught by Myrick Freeman.

The use of economic modelling techniques that capture economy-wide impacts of policy changes is growing in the South African academic, consulting and research circles.
To cater for this increased demand, the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town in conjunction with the Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies (TIPS) are offered a one week introductory course in economy-wide policy impact analysis .

TIPS is organised a one day workshop to present the findings of two case studies done by various researchers on Energy Services and Tourism. These sectors are in different ways, of critical importance to the South African Economy. They are also important to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) services negotiations.

One of the critical issues facing the South African economy is the extent to which trade liberalisation is accompanied by increasing exports. Exports however, are not just dependent on reductions in tariff rates but on a range of other factors. In sum, a successful trade liberalisation program will depend heavily on how competitive sectors are in the economy. Hence, international competitiveness is a key concern to policy makers. However, little quantitative analysis of the many facets of this concept is currently undertaken in government or amongst the research community for that matter.

This workshop sought to explore some of the measures of competitiveness in a quantitative way so that policy analysts can start thinking about how best to track the performance of a particular South African industry. The workshop was conducted over two days.

The course consisted of three trade modules covering theoretical issues in international trade, a detailed review of trade in South Africa and the role of trade institutions, specifically the World Trade Organisation.

The First SATRN Symposium had two main objectives:
- To identify ways in which SADC countries can integrate into the Global Trading System; and
- To identify key issues of interest to the SADC countries in the review of special and differential treatment currently taking place at the WTO

The Symposium brought together researchers from the SADC region, SADC's Geneva and capital based negotiators, regional trade experts and international trade experts from American Enterprise Institute, World Bank, UNCTAD, WTO, and FAO.

Senior SADC Trade negotiators, researchers and academics met in Gaberone from July 5-6 for the launching of the Southern Africa Trade Research Network (SATRN). Thjis was the first time that senior SADC trade negotiators and researchers have met to map out strategy to enhance the negotiating capacity of SADC negotiators at the WTO.

The School of Economics at the University of Cape Town and the Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies (TIPS) ran an intensive computable general equilibrium (CGE) modelling course in Cape Town between 1 July - 12 July. Professor Rob Davies from the University of Zimbabwe lectured the course.