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.

No further information is available for this event.

The World Bank releases an annual report called the Global Economic Prospects and Developing Countries. The team leader of this report Ataman Aksoy from the World Bankgave a seminar on this report at TIPS. He then presented a brief overview of the report, and talked about some of the outstanding and new trade issues and the work being done now in World bank and other agencies.

No Further information is available.

The South African economy has undergone drastic changes since the establishment of democracy in 1994. The new Government embarked on the following restructuring process comprising of the following: macroeconomic stability; trade liberalisation; foreign exchange control reform; privatisation; deregulation of certain sectors and the establishment of sector-specific regulators; a revamped competition regime and a general move away from market distorting; demand-side measures to efficiency enhancing; and supply side measures.

See Annual Forum papers

Whilst most economic course work focuses either on macroeconomic relationships or on their micro foundations, at the practical level of public sector policy analysts and policy makers, considerable attention is paid to the intermediate or meso level of economic analysis. Key sector analysis, sectoral impact studies, partial and general equilibrium trade and industry analysis are frequently conducted both in the public as well as the private sector.

An often used tool to conduct meso-level economic enquiry is input-output analysis usually extended by means of social accounting matrices. Although it is likely that only few public sector policy analysts will actually employ on a full time basis such analysis, there are currently only a handful of input-output and social accounting matrix practitioners in South Africa, many will nevertheless during their active career come across reports and applications, in which results of such analysis are presented.

In the light of the above TIPS in association with UCT's School of Economics and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) is considering a week long course on input-output/social accounting matrix multiplier analysis during the second week of July 2001. Although it will be part of the Masters program at UCT's school of economics, the course will be stand alone and cover topics such as building the underlying data base from disparate data sources, national accounts consistency, descriptive analysis and snapshot pictures of the economy at hand, multipliers and their interpretation, simple policy applications with a social accounting matrix, the price model, short comings of simple multiplier analysis.

The course will be conducted at UCT's computer lab, with hand on instructions. The working platform will be the MS Excel spreadsheet software and participants are expected to have a solid understanding of its functionality. The course will be concluded with a short group assignment and presentation. The course instructors will be supplied by staff member of the Trade and Macroeconomics Division of IFPRI ( http://www.ifpri.cgiar.org/ ).