South Africa's Changing Agricultural Trade Regime

Over the past two decades, South Africa's agricultural sector has been extensively liberalised. As a result, a closer examination of the data shows some interesting trends in international trade in food and beverage products. First, exports of processed foods and beverages have shown strong growth. Despite the large increase in exports to South Africa's traditional trading partners, largely in Europe, exports of processed goods to the SADC region have shown stronger growth. Second, imports of 'non-traditional' commodities (i.e. unprocessed goods other than rice, coffee and tea) have also grown strongly. The purpose of this paper is to provide some explanations for these trends