Do you have questions relating to South African foreign trade? With our International Trade Indicators database getting the right answer is easy.
Which countries are South Africa's main trading partners?
Our trade database contains South African import and export data classified according to industries (SIC e.g. agriculture, mining, real estate, forestry) or products (HS e.g. vehicles, plastics, textiles, vegetables). We use use HS and SIC codes to classify our trade data, making it easy to find the right product or industry. The Harmonised System (HS) is is an internationally standardised system of names and numbers for classifying traded products while the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) is a system for classifying industries by a four-digit code.
The table below is from our trade database and illustrates South Africa's main trading partners for 2006 and how the balance is shifting towards trading with China, the East and the Middle East.
| Imports | ||||||
| Germany | China | United States | Japan | Saudi Arabia | Total | |
| 1996 | 15,2 | 2,1 | 12,9 | 8,3 | 0,8 | R113,3bn |
| 2001 | 14,7 | 4,2 | 11,9 | 6,7 | 6,8 | R218,5bn |
| 2006 | 12,7 | 10,2 | 7,6 | 6,6 | 5,3 | R459,7bn |
| Exports | ||||||
| Japan | United States | United Kingdom | Germany | Netherlands | Total | |
| 1996 | 7,4 | 8,2 | 6,7 | 4,8 | 2,9 | R116,6bn |
| 2001 | 7,8 | 12,1 | 9,6 | 8,0 | 3,8 | R252,0bn |
| 2006 | 10,8 | 10,5 | 8,1 | 6,9 | 4,7 | R390,7bn |
Table 1: South African Trade (% of total)
What is the provincial breakdown of South Africa's exports?
Quantec also maintains a trade database for all 9 of South Africa's provinces (Gauteng, Kwazulu-Natal, Western Cape, Eastern Cape, North West, Northern Cape, Limpopo, Free State and Mpumalanga) in South African Rand and US Dollar. The following graph illustrates the contribution of each province to South African exports in 2006.
