The impact of trade facilitation factors on South Africa's exports to a selection of African countries

Abstract

Economic growth can be enhanced through increased trade among countries, provided the correct institutional structures are in place. A country's trade is dependent not only on its own trade facilitation reforms but also on those of the trading partners. This paper, using an augmented gravity model, examines trade facilitation factors that impact on South Africa's exports to other selected African countries. The results of the estimation reveal the following. An improvement in the customs environment within the importing country provides the largest gain in terms of increasing trade flows, followed by the regulatory environment and domestic infrastructure. Furthermore, adjacency and common language impact positively on South African exports, while distance between countries impacts negatively on it. Being part of the Southern African Development Community is also enhancing exports from South Africa, compared with being part of the East African Community.

A Simulation Approach to Reconciling Customs and Trade Risk Associated With Cross-Border Freight Movements

“…Not only is trade facilitation a broad field of study, it is also multidisciplinary in nature, including political, economic, business, administrative, technical, technological, financial, and legal elements [14]. It is generally accepted that a decline in trade costs will increase trade performance.…”

“…To determine which data to add through telematics, it is necessary to identify the primary contributors to long delays. Based on recent studies performed in the cross-border field [14], it is clear that human processes are the primary culprits. The current nature of the process required to clear a consignment from customs involves, among other things, the following:…”

“…However, countries show a general reluctance to follow through on trade agreements; and this has an adverse effect on any cross-border initiative [5]. Even shared national borders do not guarantee trade integration if trade facilitation measures are incompatible [14].…”

Trade facilitation and its effects on Chile’s bilateral trade between 2006 and 2014

“…A variety of studies recognize that trade facilitation measures, including logistics systems in general, have a positive effect on countries' trade flows and, hence, on their productivity (Batra, Kaufmann and Stone, 2003;Wilson, Man and Otsuki, 2003;Engman, 2005;Nordas and others, 2006;Wilson, 2007;Jean-François and others, 2007;Echeverría, 2007;Hummels, 2007;Iwanow and Kirkpatrick, 2007;Martínez-Zarzoso and Márquez-Ramos, 2008;Servín, 2008;Castro, 2010;Djankov, Freund and Pham, 2010;Portugal-Pérez and Wilson, 2012;Moïsé and Sorescu, 2013;Cordero, 2014;Jordaan, 2014;Sant'Anna and De Souza, 2014;Zaki, 2015). Djankov, Freund and Pham (2010) estimated that an additional day's pre-shipment delay would reduce trade by at least 1%.…”

African Countries’ Agricultural Trade Value Chain Assessment Case study: Tanzania (Cashew nut exports)

“…people) together with the political and economy instability of the region (Reid, 2014) are the main reasons of the constantly growing food deficit in the region (Jenicek, 2011). The specific problem related to African agricultural trade is the existing disproportion in area of agrarian trade commodity structure (Jordaan, 2014). While more than half of agricultural exports are represented by raw production or semi-finalized production, about 70-80% of the total agrarian import value is represented by finalized food production.…”