This paper investigates South Africa's saving-investment behaviour between 1962 and 2001. The results show that due to the unlimited nature of net capital inflows (foreign debt) from 1962 to 1976, saving and investment were not bound by a long-run solvency constraint and thus unrelated in the long run. By contrast,…

The unemployment rate among semi- and unskilled workers in South Africa is over 50%. This high rate can be attributed to various factors, including political decisions of the past, educational inequalities, and poor economic growth. These factors have contributed to the structural unemployment problem in South Africa. The real cost…

Telecommunications services are an important focus for most industrial countries in the current round of trade talks in services. Initial negotiating positions and country requests by these industrial countries all call for full liberalisation of the sector. SADC countries have already embarked on reform in telecommunications but few have made…

Botswana's financial sector is relatively small, reflecting the small size of the market and perhaps the thorough approach to licensing and supervision.  The size of the sector in relation to the economy (as measured by the ratio of broad money to non-mining GDP) declined in the first half of the…

The Botswana telecommunications sector is made of four major stakeholders. The Botswana Telecommunications Authority (BTA) is the sectors' regulator. The Botswana Telecommunications Corporation (BTC), a government owned company, provides fixed lines. Two private companies, Mascom Wireless and Vista Cellular provide mobile services. Very little research on the telecommunication sector in…

Negotiations on the liberalisation of telecommunications form an important part of service negotiations in the Doha Round. The negotiations cover all aspects of the telecoms sector, including fixed line public networks, mobile networks and the full range of value-added network services (VANS) such as Internet and virtual private networks. Liberalisation…

This paper will begin by outlining the policy framework that informs EU trade policies and will set out a development perspective that informs the evaluation of EU trade policies. The paper then discusses the issue of adjustment in the EU and evaluates the EU track record in key industries of…

This report attempts to provide an overview of South Africa's industrial landscape during the 1990s, focusing on growth and sectoral shares in value-added at a detailed 46-sector level. Use is made of the TIPS South African Standardised Industry Database, which offers long-term trends spanning 1970 to the present for 46…

South Africa has experienced significant liberalisation during the 1990s on the political as well as economic front. Starting with the first democratic elections in 1994, the economy has undergone liberalisation of internal and external financial markets, labour markets and trade regime. Major changes have also taken place in terms of…

The SADC Free Trade Agreement (FTA) came into effect recently. Periodic examination of intra-SADC trade flows is an important element of monitoring the impact of the FTA.

The SADC Free Trade Agreement, which came into being at the beginning of 2000 is up for a mid term review during 2004. The agreement is characterised by complex and restrictive rules of origin. Using references to case studies, Frank Flatters argues that if rules of origin were used simply…

The overriding objectives of the Nepad programme are economic growth and sustainable development. If it is accepted that trade contributes positively to these objectives, the next question that arises is how to improve African countries' export performance. The ability to improve export performance requires a broader discussion of trade, industrial…

Of concern to domestic policy makers is that trade between Finland and South Africa is very much biased in favour of the former country. Set against this backdrop, Trade and Investment South Africa (TISA) of the South African Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), together with the Finnish Embassy in…

The Trade Performance Index (TPI) is a tool developed by the International Trade Centre (ITC) for assessing and monitoring the multi-faceted dimensions of export performance and competitiveness of countries and their principal export sectors. At present, the TPI covers 184 countries and 14 different sectors. It reveals how competitive and…

This report attempts to provide an overview of South Africa's industrial landscape during the 1990s, with specific emphasis on growth and sectoral shares in exports at a detailed 46-sector level. If one of the objective of the policies adopted during the middle of the 1990s was to bring about a…

The first section sketches the well-known argument that there is a potential clash between trade policy reform, employment creation and poverty alleviation in the context of economic integration in Southern Africa. The argument is developed in the wider context of the endowments and accumulation of key resources in Sub Saharan…

Policy makers in the public sector are often faced with requests for financial and other support of investment projects and incentive schemes. Frequently, such requests are accompanied by or require economic impact analyses of some sort. Economic impact assessment of investment projects can be undertaken at various levels. At one…

In South Africa, there is an increasing trend towards trading health services, both in the public and in the private health sectors, despite minimal formal liberalisation offered by South Africa under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Health services trade has been occurring in at least three of…

Telecommunications services are an important focus for most industrial countries in the current round of trade talks in services. Initial negotiating positions and country requests by these industrial countries all call for full liberalisation of the sector. James Hodge reports that SADC countries have already embarked on reform in telecommunications…

Our understanding of the concept of poverty has improved and deepened considerably in the last three decades or so following Amartya Sen's seminal work. We possess presently the analytical tools to identify and locate the poor, to describe their characteristics and to measure the extent of poverty at different levels…