SA trade stats show import upturn, writes Alan Peat
THERE IS some considerable disparity between the latest SA-Zimbabwe trade figures and the sorry stories about rapidly declining cross-border volumes that FTW has been hearing in recent months.
Since the middle of last year, transporters and forwarders have complained to FTW about the tragic fall-off in Zimbabwe-bound traffic as political, economic and social problems have begun to bedevil the northern neighbour, SA's largest trading partner in Africa by far.
But the latest trade figures released to FTW by Whitehouse & Associates indicate that exports in 1999 only fell by some 1% (some R50-million) over the previous year. Imports, meantime, actually rose by 12% - riding on the back of better totals of tobacco and mineral imports to SA.
But SA might be lucky, according to Laurie Bateman, director of MSC Logistics which recently reported a drop in volumes to Zimbabwe.
On the scale of preference amongst trading partners, SA has retained its flavour more than other trading partners of Zimbabwe, he added.
Because of the effect of exchange rates, Bateman told FTW, the first to be hit were Zimbabwe's overseas partners.
Here, the Zimbabwean importer is loathe to import in volume where the stockholding constitutes a large amount of dead money.
A full container load (FCL) of white goods from overseas is now very expensive to the Zimbabwean importer, said Bateman. He now prefers to order smaller volumes locally - and move them as less than container load (LCL) consignments.
This is also linked to the fact that large proportions of SA's trade with Zimbabwe are the necessities of everyday life - while high-tech luxury goods tend to be sourced from further afield.
The end result of this is that the large decline in box numbers reported to FTW are international imports - in transit through SA.
There are other contributory factors to the decline in volumes.
The Zimbabwean government is also strapped for cash, and, according to Bateman, a lot of big government tenders have been put on hold for the moment.
A lot of things we expected to go just haven't been shipped, he said.
Liz Whitehouse, of Whitehouse & Associates, agrees with this assumption.
This would mean that a lot of high-volume, low-value goods, like construction materials destined for projects have been amongst the big sufferers, she said.
Here, the volume figures - expressed in TEU (twenty foot equivalent units) loads - are affected more than the value figures, from which the customs trade statistics are compiled.
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