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- Janet Wilhelm
Patel signals subtle shift in South Africa’s trade policy
FDI Tracker Q1 2023
A total of 11 FDI projects were recorded in the first quarter of 2023. The pledged investment value for the quarter is attributable to only three projects and amounts to R47.8 billion. Tracking captured 50 364 employment opportunities with numbers reported for two projects. Terragrn’s agroforest project accounts for 50 000 of these jobs, and will be created over a period of 20 years, and the Climate Fund Managers project, which will create 64 permanent and 300 temporary jobs. In this quarter, 18 projects previously recorded in the Tracker are updated
Uncertain responses: Contrasting industrial policy during the COVID-19 pandemic and loadshedding
South Africa’s official responses to two far-reaching crises – the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 and escalating loadshedding in 2022 – underscored a profound, albeit unacknowledged, ambivalence about industrial policy. That reality emerged even though the democratic state has consistently called for economic reconstruction.
This policy brief summarises the divergent strategies, and then seeks to explain the divergence in priorities and scale between the responses to the two crises. It finds that government agencies could align around industrial policy initiatives on a disruptive scale if, as in the pandemic, those initiatives mirrored policies adopted in the Global North, and did not impose large costs on powerful stakeholders. More commonly, however, as with loadshedding, economic reconstruction requires innovative, tailored solutions and imposes significant burdens on powerful companies and institutions. In these circumstances, government interventions have proven modest and often incoherent.
Seizing the moment: South Africa’s opportunity to build renewable energy and battery value chains
Business Report - 19 July 2023 by Gaylor Montmasson-Clair (TIPS Senior Economist and SAREM Facilitator)
Opinion: Does this count as a just transition investment?
Engineering News - 17 July 2023 by Sandy Lowitt (TIPS Research Fellow)
Opinion: How South Africa could seize the moment and build renewables and battery value chains
Engineering News - 18 July 2023 by Gaylor Montmasson-Clair (TIPS Senior Economist and SAREM Facilitator)
State localisation procurement decision is irrational
No to tariff hike, yes to competitiveness
Boots and helmets make way for aprons and caps
Business Day - 11 July 2023 by Neva Makgetla (TIPS Senior Economist)
TIPS Imports localisation and supply chain disruption study - Fourth Quarter 2022
The Import Localisation and Supply Chain Disruption study is a quarterly report that seeks to identify goods from the list of imports identified in the Import Tracker report that South Africa could possibly viably manufacture. Each quarter focuses on five manufactured items from the list of imports in the corresponding quarter's Import Tracker report. The five products in this report are:
Product 5: Herbicides, anti-sprouting products and plant-growth regulators
Download: TIPS Import Tracker - Fourth Quarter