TIPS In the News
A new programme, the 2nd Economy Strategy Project has been added to the website. The purpose of this project is to contribute to reducing poverty and inequality in South Africa by supporting the government to develop a Strategy for the Second Economy, as part of its Accelerated Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa (Asgi-SA), located in the Presidency. Asgi-SA'™s target is to halve poverty and unemployment in SA by 2014. Find out more here.
TradeInvestSA - 8 January 2008
One of the major talking points around the EPAs is that negotiations have greatly undermined regional integration initiatives in Eastern and Southern African and elsewhere. The State of Doha Round - It has been more than six years since the Doha Development Round of World Trade Organisation (WTO) was launched at the Fourth Ministerial Conference (1). The agenda initiated negotiations on agriculture and services. The Fifth Ministerial Conference was supposed to be a review where members would agree on how to complete the rest of the negotiations, but progress was hindered by disputes on agricultural issues and ended in deadlock on the new generation issues
TradeInvestSA - 21 October 2007
Post-apartheid South Africa embarked on a trade policy framework to make the economy competitive by engaging the international community. That framework took the economy through a gradual process of reforms that resulted in a shift - from being one of the most protected and distorted markets in the world to the one that reflects openness. The momentum was carried forward by the signing of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1994 and implementation of the free trade agreements (FTAs) with the European Union (EU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in 2000.
Furthermore, South Africa has given consideration to FTAs with China, India, Brazil and Unites States as it tries to broaden trade relations across the globe. The most observable feature of these commitments is the reduction of import protection. This is based on the principle that resources will flow from uncompetitive sectors to sectors with a comparative advantage as competition increases, known as allocative efficiency. The same argument can be used to refer to the trade partners that dominate relations with South Africa: that trade should be biased in favour of the competitive ones at the expense of uncompetitive ones.
View the attached document to read more.
The revision process that was carried out on the 2006 Southern African trade data has been completed. The 2006 data (for most of the SADC member states) are back online - please visit the database at http://www.sadctrade.org/tradedata. If you have questions around the Southern African trade database, please contact Mmatlou Kalaba.
Business Day - 13 July 2007
The National Energy Regulator of SA (Nersa) is just over a year old but has quickly established itself as a force to be taken seriously. From its comprehensive reports on SA's electricity crisis to its two landmark petroleum pipeline decisions, it has show that it is a regulator in the true sense of the word and not a negotiator.
View the attached news article to read more.
www.chinaview.cn - 13 April 2007
GENEVA, April 12 (Xinhua) -- World trade is expected to grow slower in 2007 given the prospect of weaker economic expansion in the coming year, the World Trade Organization (WTO) said on Thursday.The global trade growth could slow down to 6 percent from 8 percent last year as world economic growth is expected to slip to 3 percent from last year's 3.7 percent, the WTO said in a report on trade in 2006 and prospects for 2007.
The University of Adelaide website - 5 January 2007
The University of Adelaide's Institute for International Trade is undertaking a $456,000 12-month study to identify the best trade policies for poverty reduction in the Asia Pacific region. The project is being supported by AusAid and the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and will involve several Schools within the University of Adelaide as well as academic and business researchers throughout the region.
24 October 2006
Johannesburg - The presidency has commissioned the country's first national income study to help the government get a better understanding of the extent of poverty. The study, which gets under way next year, is an acknowledgment that poverty remains a central issue. The national income dynamic study will be conducted by the SA Labour Development Research Unit (Saldru) based at the University of Cape Town (UCT), rather than by Statistics SA or the Human Sciences Research Council. The study will track 8 000 households indefinitely to provide policy makers with a better understanding of the dynamics of poverty.
24 October 2006
Even if South Africa is to create new jobs in the period leading up to 2015, this is unlikely to make a major dent in reducing poverty. This emerged as the central policy question (aside from differences over the extent of poverty) during a debate on poverty and inequality at last week's Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies and the University of Cape Town Development Policy Research Unit (DPRU) conference.
Business Report - 20 October 2006
The release of important economic data always makes headlines. But Corne van Walbeek, a senior lecturer at the University of Cape Town (UCT), warned yesterday that the statistical authorities and the financial press should treat initial releases with caution. Van Walbeek, of UCT's school of economics, raised the issue in a paper presented at a conference arranged by the Development Policy Research Unit [and Trade & Industrial Policy Strategies].
Business Day - 20 October 2006
Efforts by Transnet and Eskom to promote the development of local suppliers of capital goods for their infrastructure programmes aimed to address the real risk that parastatals might struggle to source some of the items they need on global markets, and would not delay the infrastructure roll out, the official responsible for driving the supplier programme said this week. The public enterprise department's Edwin Ritchken was speaking at a conference on accelerated and shared growth in SA, hosted by the University of Cape Town's Development Policy Research Unit and TIPS (Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies).
Mail & Guardian - 21 October 2006
Robert Pollin, Jerry Epstein, James Heintz and Leonce Ndikumana of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, US presented brief highlights of the major proposals from their recently published book An Employment Targeted Economic Programme for South Africa at the 2006 Forum. Pollin is a director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Finance24 - 3 September 2003
South Africa's socio- economic performance since 1994 will come under the spotlight at a forum to be held in Johannesburg next week...
Business Day- 10 May 2003
A RESEARCH paper by a trade and industry think-tank has echoed the urgent need to create more jobs in the country. The paper, published by Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies (Tips), showed a drop in employment across all industrial sectors except one from 1990 to 2001...
Business Day - 9 September 2003
SA's manufacturing performance since the 1990s has been below par and the trade and industry department's incentive strategies to boost the sector have not been effective, according to the department's former chief economist...
Business Day - 16 September 2003
SHOULD SA have an inflation cap on increases in administered prices? The Reserve Bank, MPs and others have fingered administered prices as an inflation culprit. Tariff increases implemented by public entities, in sectors such as telecommunications, electricity and transport, have run ahead of the inflation target range, putting upward pressure on prices and undermining efforts to bring inflation down to within the range...
Business Day - 28 October 2003
THE South African economy has experienced significant trade reforms in the past decade...
Business Day - 29 October 2003
THE World Trade Organisation (WTO) was, and largely remains, developing countries' best hope for mitigating the uneven power relations between large developed nations and small developing countries in the trading environment.
Business Day - 3 May 2004
Data on the small business sector remains varied, leading to confusion and ignorance over its role...
Business Day - 3 May 2003
Tisa says local manufacturing industry has continued to grow, while reliance on gold and diamonds has halved Trade and Industry Correspondent TRADE and Investment SA (Tisa) a government agency responsible for promoting investment and export development...
Business Day - 11 May 2004
GOVERNMENT should step in to halt the deterioration of Gauteng's East Rand, which has been reduced from "SA's workshop" into "SA's rust belt"
Financial Mail - 22 October 2004
The World Bank's new chief economist for Africa, John Page, says Africa needs a political deal to foster economic growth. He spoke to Carol Paton at the Tips/Development Policy Research Unit's annual forum in Cape Town.
Business Day - 11 January 2005
THERE is growing concern about stagnating growth in the numbers of small businesses, it emerged in the latest review of the sector by the trade and industry department. Government's policy for the small business sector has come under fire from entrepreneurs and small business practitioners, who say it is not doing enough to boost the sector's contribution to economic growth.
See attachment
Financial Mail - 10 December 2004
The overall numbers of small businesses and entrepreneurs in SA are growing strongly but there are marked differences between the formal and informal sectors. Informal entrepreneurship is booming - it grew 11% from 2002 to 2003 - but formal sector small business has stagnated and even shrunk slightly (0,5%) over the same period (see table). By far the most informal enterprises were initiated by African women, whose participation in the formal sector simultaneously regressed. These are the findings of the "Annual review of small business 2003", a report commissioned by the department of trade & industry and conducted by policy think-tank Trade & Industry Policy Strategies (Tips).
Business Day - 8 February 2008
AUSTRALIA's Deputy Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Bruce Billson urged developing countries yesterday to make substantial reductions in their trade barriers to encourage economic growth and trade among themselves.
Business Report - 31 March 2005
In two recent research papers posted on the website of Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies, a local think-tank with close ties to the government, the researchers focused on the debate about whether government had cut import tariffs too quickly, harming major industries such as clothing and textiles
Business Day - 5 May 2005
Commentators say government should provide financial assistance where there is a crisis that may have significant economic and social consequences, and where temporary aid can provide breathing space for a turnaround that will set a company on a sustainable path.
Business Day - 18 October 2005
SOME commentators believe that countries should…just do it - when it comes to unilateral trade liberalisation. It is argued, perhaps correctly, that the World Trade Organisation negotiations have become too complex, with too many players, for significant liberalisation to occur through this…multilateral-process. The answer, apparently, is unilateral tariff reductions. The assumption behind this is that free trade will simply lead to higher growth. If only things were that simple.
16 February 2007
2005 Trade data for a number of countries have been uploaded for various Member States on the Southern African Trade Development website.
The Observer
In November 2001, leading politicians from the world's most powerful countries decided that allowing poor nations access to northern hemisphere markets was the best way to stamp out the root causes of militant anti-Western feeling.
Launched in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist atrocities, the Doha trade round was the chosen device. Poverty alleviation through profit was always seen as the key plank of the international development agenda - more important even than increased aid and debt write-offs.