South Africa continued to maintain a relatively strong trade balance in the third quarter of 2025, in constant 2025 Rand, for the tenth consecutive quarter. The trade surplus increased to R44 billion in the third quarter of 2025, from R36 billion in the third quarter of 2024. However, there is…

South Africa’s quarterly exports and imports, in constant (2025) rand and current United States dollars, over the 10-year time period spanning the third quarter of 2015 to the third quarter of 2025 are higher at the end of the timeframe than at the beginning. In the third quarter of 2025,…

South Africa has many of the ingredients required for successful economic development yet over the past few years our growth rates have been weak. An important indicator is the low rate of investment in the economy - both domestic and international investment. This Development Dialogue discussed South Africa's investment climate, considering the progress that has…

Decarbonising the South African economy and achieving a “just transition” has placed a renewed emphasis on the need to diversify local economies, especially in places dominated by coal. TIPS is conducting research under multiple projects that focuses on sector and place-based strategies for promoting greener, more diversified economies while ensuring…

Tshepo Molokoane holds a Master's degree in Economics from the University of Cape Town, where his dissertation focused on trade liberalisation and wage inequality in South Africa's manufacturing sector. Before joining TIPS, he worked as a research assistant at the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) and the Labour Research Service, contributing to research on labour markets, economic analysis and economic development.

Sebenzile Hlatshwayo is a Master of Commerce student in Economics at the University of Zululand. She is actively engaging in the academic space and has presented her research at platforms such as the Economic Society of South Africa (ESSA), the UKZN Macroeconomic Research Unit, and the Mbali International Conference. She has participated in Economic Research Southern Africa (ERSA) workshops and ERSA winter schools. Her research focus areas include climate change, sustainable development growth, and macroeconomic uncertainty. She also showcased her analytical prowess in the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Investment research competition, earning a Certificate of outstanding research

Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies NPC (“TIPS”) Privacy Policy

‍This Privacy Policy details how TIPS collects and processes Personal Information (PI) from users of its websites, social media, and services. It is guided by South African law, specifically the Protection of Personal Information Act and the Promotion of Access to Information Act.

This Policy applies to any person, including a natural person, a company, a body corporate, an association, a joint venture, a partnership, a trust and any entity capable of suing and being sued, who visit and/or use TIPS’ websites or social media pages, attendees at TIPS events, funders and prospective funders and their representatives, suppliers (including their representatives) and any/all TIPS’ employees (hereinafter referred to as “you/your”) and potentially in turn, the PI of your clients.

The scope of this policy is limited to TIPS-owned offerings and does not apply to third-party websites or services linked through their platforms. Additionally, PI does not include anonymous or statistical data that cannot be linked back to an identifiable person or entity.

TIPS reserves the right to update this policy at any time, with important changes communicated through website statements or pop-up notices. Continued interaction with TIPS services after such updates constitutes your consent to the current version of the policy. The primary goal is to ensure you understand who you are sharing your PI with and how it is being utilized.

 What We Collect

TIPS collects information through your interactions with their platforms, specifically:

• Identity & Company Info: Your IP address (location/company), your company logo, and details about your employer (size, industry, and public officers).
• Device Details: Type, OS, browser, language settings, and unique device identifiers.
• Usage & Behaviour: How you navigate their sites, pages visited, time spent, content downloaded, and search terms used to find them.
• Account Activity: Support logs, transaction history, and products or services you’ve inquired about.
• Demographics & Metrics: Behavioural attributes linked to your identity and aggregated data on feature usage or errors.

Note: If TIPS combines any general data with your Personal Information (PI), we treat the entire set as PI.

 How we use this Information

We use your information to deliver and improve our services, ensure security and legal compliance, and communicate relevant updates and marketing (which you can opt out of at any time) and specifically:

Operational & Legal

 Service Delivery: To provide services to you.

• Security: To verify your identity, prevent fraud, and keep our systems safe.
• Compliance: To meet legal and regulatory requirements.

Improvement & Analysis

• Development: To design better products and improve features based on your needs.
• Optimization: To diagnose technical problems and analyze usage trends.

 Communication & Marketing

• Updates: To send newsletters, surveys, and information about new features.
• Marketing: To offer products we think you’ll like (you can opt out at any time).

Who are you sharing your information with?

TIPS uses and shares PI as required by law:

• PI may be accessed globally by authorised TIPS employees, shared with third-party service providers under data protection agreements, or disclosed with your explicit consent.

TIPS processes and shares PI in good faith for purposes such as:

• Legal compliance,
• Responding to government or legal requests,
• Service improvement,
• Enforcing terms and limiting damages,
• Business changes like mergers or sales.

PI shared with third parties is protected per this Privacy Policy. TIPS never sells or rents your personal information.

Non-personal information may be used, transferred, or disclosed for statistical or other lawful purposes.

Another Person’s Information

1. If you share any PI with TIPS that relates to another person (“Data Subject”) you warrant and undertake to and in favour of TIPS that:
   • you are in lawful possession and control of the PI and that you have the consent of the Data Subject to allow TIPS to process and in any other manner use such PI for the purpose for which it was collected or made available and as contemplated in this Privacy Policy;
   • the Data Subject has consented to the Data Subject’s PI being processed in a country that is different to the Data Subject’s country of residence or business;
   • you will promptly inform TIPS in writing in the event that a Data Subject requests that its PI be updated or in the event that a Data Subject withdraws the consent;
   • you will be responsible for ensuring the correctness or accuracy of the Data Subject’s PI that is processed by TIPS.

For What Period Does TIPS Retain Personal Information

TIPS retains your personal information only as long as needed for its intended purpose or until you withdraw consent. If required by law or for legal claims, TIPS will keep your data until obligations are met or claims are resolved. Afterward, your information will be securely deleted or anonymised to prevent reconstruction.

How do we store and secure your Personal Information?

We use reasonable technical and organisational safeguards designed to protect your PI from unauthorised or unlawful processing, accidental loss, misuse, unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration and destruction.

However, despite our best efforts, no security controls are 100% effective and we cannot guarantee the security of your PI. In the event that your PI is acquired, or is reasonably believed to have been acquired, by an unauthorised person and applicable law requires notification, we will give you notice promptly. We will determine the scope of the breach, investigate and restore the integrity of the data system.

The data that we collect from you is stored on Microsoft Azure Cloud Servers.

How TIPS transfers PI it collects internationally

TIPS collects and shares information globally. For purposes of providing the TIPS offerings to you, TIPS may transfer, process and store your PI outside your country of residence or business to wherever TIPS or its third party service providers operate and you consent to your PI being processed in this manner. I

 Why do we use cookies

We make use of cookies on our website to identify your web browser, to analyze how our website and online services perform, are used and to make improvements to ensure our website remains useful, effective and efficient. Cookies will be used to save your email address and name so the next time you visit your account from the same device we will have a record and will remember your email address and name to make your experience faster and simpler.

What are your Data Protection Rights?

We want to ensure you are fully aware of all of your data protection rights. Every user is entitled to the following:

1. The right to access – You have the right to request copies of your personal data. We may charge you a small fee for this service.
2. Right to be informed -  As a data subject, you have a right to obtain access and information under the conditions provided in the Data Protection Legislation.
3. The right to rectification – You have the right to request that we correct any information you believe is inaccurate.
4. The right to erasure – You have the right to request that we erase your personal data, under certain conditions.
5. The right to restrict processing – You have the right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.
6. The right to object to processing – You have the right to object to our processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.
7. The right to data portability – You have the right to request that we transfer the data that we have collected to another organization, or directly to you, under certain conditions.
8. Right to withdraw consent - Where the processing of your data relies on your prior consent, you have the right to withdraw such a consent at any time by notifying us. By withdrawing your consent, the lawfulness of the processing based on consent up until the point of withdrawal will not be affected.
9. The right to lodge a complaint: If you think we have processed your PI unfairly or unlawfully, or we have not complied with your rights, you have the right to complain to a national data protection authority.

 General Clauses

This Privacy Policy represents the entire agreement between TIPS and you regarding its subject matter. Only terms explicitly stated herein are binding.

If any provision becomes unenforceable in a specific jurisdiction, it will be severed without affecting the rest of the Policy or its enforceability elsewhere.

TIPS’ failure to enforce any provision does not waive its right to do so later.

You may not assign your rights or delegate obligations under this Policy without TIPS’ written consent.

Provisions intended to survive termination remain effective after your relationship with TIPS ends.

No part of this Policy is to be interpreted against TIPS because it drafted the document.

 TIPS’ Contact Details

If you believe that your PI has been used in a way that is not consistent with this Privacy Policy or your choices, or if you wish to submit a request to TIPS regarding your PI or if you have any questions or comments related to this Privacy Policy, please address same in writing to the Information Officer at:

Email address:       info@tips.org

Physical address: 234 Lange St, Nieuw Muckleneuk, Pretoria, South Africa, 0108

Main Bulletin:  The Real Economy Bulletin - Fourth Quarter 2025 In this edition GDP: The non-agricultural GDP climbed only 0.7% in 2025, with a 4% decline in construction and utilities and a 1% fall in manufacturing. Business services and trade each grew around 2%. The data on agriculture are still plagued by extraordinary swings. The crisis in ferroalloys production depressed figures for manufacturing and depressed outcomes in both electricity and exports. Read more. Employment: In the year to the fourth quarter of 2025, total employment was reported as stagnant, growing much slower than the GDP. As a result, the share of adults…

13 - 16 April 2026 - TIPS Office: 234 Lange Street, Nieuw Muckleneuk, PTA

Price: R16 000 vat included (per delegate) and $1000 ( for delegates from developed countries)

Acceptance deadline: 3 April 2026

The economy is a system. Disturbances to one part, which might be caused by policies or by unanticipated shocks, can have consequences for other parts. Responses to these knock-on effects may create feed backs, enhancing or constraining the initial impact. Understanding these system wide effects can be important for policy design, since they determine how the costs and benefits of a policy are distributed throughout the economy.

Most graduates of economics programmes have in their toolbox microeconomic methods, for analysing the behaviour of individual agents and markets, and macroeconomic methods, for analysing the economy as a whole. These are powerful tools, but the latter do not give the detailed view of the economy that policy analysts often want, while the usual ceteris paribus assumption of microeconomics can often be inappropriate when the shocks are large.

Input-output and Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models provide tools to examine the economy as a whole while also incorporating sufficient detail to address impacts on sectors and income distribution. Wassily Leontief published his first input-output paper in 1936. Leif Johansen published his pioneering CGE model in 1960. However, although there was substantial work developing both these approaches in the decades before 1990, they both remained rather niche approaches until the rise of cheap computing power and modern data.

Since 2000 there has been an explosion in the literature using these tools, extending the range of their application. The methods, either by themselves or in conjunction with models from other disciplines, are being brought to bear on a wide and expanding range of issues of concern to the modern world: climate change, renewable energy, AI, water scarcity, regional integration, trade in value added, value chains, the causes and consequences of macroeconomic fluctuations.

Approach

The workshop will introduce participants to the databases on which economywide models are based: supply and use tables, input-output tables and social accounting matrices. It will then cover the fundamental methods of multiplier analysis and illustrate how they can be extended to a range of issues. The teaching method focuses on hands-on practical application. All models are implemented in Microsoft Excel.

Upon completion, participants will possess both the theoretical foundation and practical expertise necessary for linear economy-wide impact analysis. The workshop also offers valuable preparation for process managers required to interpret such analyses, and provides essential groundwork for those wishing to pursue computable general equilibrium (CGE) modelling.

A subsequent CGE modelling workshop will be available for interested participants.

Course facilitators

Rob Davies is a Zimbabwean economist who lives in Harare. He previously served as Chair of the Department of Economics at the University of Zimbabwe. His academic career includes roles as a visiting professor at Swarthmore University in the United States, a visiting senior lecturer at SOAS in the United Kingdom, and a visiting research fellow at the Human Science Research Council (HSRC) in Pretoria, South Africa. He is a director of the Trade Law Centre (tralac), a public benefit organisation based in Cape Town. He has published extensively and collaborated with organisations such as the World Bank, South African National Treasury, TIPS, UNU-WIDER, Global Trade Analysis Project, and the International Food Policy Research Institute. His recent work uses Computable General Equilibrium models to address policy issues such as automation, labour market polarisation, carbon taxes, electricity shortages in South Africa, climate change in Zimbabwe, the green economy in Vietnam, and COVID impacts.

Dirk van Seventer is a New Zealand-based applied economist specialising in macroeconomics, trade and labour market economics, multisector input-output and Computable General Equilibrium modelling. After completing his Masters in Economics at the Rijksuniversiteit van Groningen in the Netherlands, he moved to South Africa where he worked as economic researcher at the University of Stellenbosch during the 1980s, the Development Bank of Southern Africa during the early 1990s and TIPS in the late 1990s. In early 2000 he followed his family to New Zealand where he worked at the Department of Labour for six years as a Principal Information Analyst. Currently, Dirk is an associate economist with the consulting firm Infometrics in Wellington, New Zealand and a modelling expert with Genesis Analytics Consulting in Johannesburg. He has published widely in South African and international journals. and has contributed to building numerous Social Accounting Matrices for several countries in Southern Africa and Asia.

For more information contact Rozale Sewduth at Rozale@tips.org.za 

 

Following earlier research on the employment vulnerability assessment and sector jobs resilience plans, further in-depth research has been done on specific challenges and opportunities in each of the five impacted sectors as well as on cross cutting issues. This research was presented at a learning event on 31 March…

This paper situates the current debate on Reform of the WTO in the context of the history of the Reform agenda led by the United States and the European Union in the WTO since the collapse of the Doha Round of negotiations in 2008. Download or read online: WTO Reform and…

Kealeboga Baikgaki is an economist at TIPS. She holds a Master of Commerce in Economics degree (With distinction) from the North-West University. She is passionate about student development, demonstrated though her roles as a supplemental instruction facilitator, student assistant and serving on the Golden Key International Honour Society’s executive committee. She has previously worked at the North West Provincial Treasury in the Fiscal Policy and Macroeconomic Analysis unit. Her interests are economic research, energy security, sustainable economic development and policy analysis.

In the third quarter of 2025, monitoring added 18 projects to the Tracker, of which eight reported investment values. The total announced value amounted to R37.8 billion. Projects were registered across services, utilities, mining and manufacturing. Employment opportunities were recorded from two projects – 780 jobs from the Marula Green…

REGISTER HERE Climate change and the transition to lower emissions will impact workers and communities across multiple value chains. In our previous events, we explored both vulnerability and opportunities for jobs resilience in five key sectors: Coal, Petroleum-based Transport, Tourism, Metals, and Agriculture. This learning event provides an overview of…