South Africa - Merchandise exports to low- and middle-income economies within region (% of total merchandise exports)

Merchandise exports to low- and middle-income economies within region (% of total merchandise exports) in South Africa was 22.50 as of 2020. Its highest value over the past 60 years was 29.36 in 2014, while its lowest value was 2.08 in 1978.

Definition: Merchandise exports to low- and middle-income economies within region are the sum of merchandise exports from the reporting economy to other low- and middle-income economies in the same World Bank region as a percentage of total merchandise exports by the economy. Data are computed only if at least half of the economies in the partner country group had non-missing data. No figures are shown for high-income economies, because they are a separate category in the World Bank classification of economies.

Source: World Bank staff estimates based data from International Monetary Fund's Direction of Trade database.

See also:

Year Value
1960 3.72
1961 2.73
1962 2.40
1963 2.84
1964 9.87
1965 10.80
1966 6.99
1967 6.91
1968 7.25
1969 6.72
1970 6.71
1971 6.95
1972 6.23
1973 5.82
1974 5.34
1975 3.61
1976 2.51
1977 2.78
1978 2.08
1979 2.16
1980 2.54
1981 5.34
1982 5.47
1983 5.15
1984 4.28
1985 4.08
1986 3.62
1987 4.16
1988 2.73
1989 5.36
1990 5.43
1991 6.02
1992 9.40
1993 9.84
1994 11.20
1995 11.89
1996 12.32
1997 13.14
1998 12.24
1999 14.36
2000 17.00
2001 11.11
2002 12.38
2003 12.66
2004 11.90
2005 12.49
2006 13.23
2007 13.66
2008 15.93
2009 18.10
2010 24.61
2011 23.61
2012 26.74
2013 27.50
2014 29.36
2015 27.88
2016 27.56
2017 25.31
2018 25.47
2019 25.68
2020 22.50

Development Relevance: The relative importance of intraregional trade is higher for both landlocked countries and small countries with close trade links to the largest regional economy. For most low- and middle-income economies - especially smaller ones - there is a "geographic bias" favoring intraregional trade. Despite the broad trend toward globalization and the reduction of trade barriers, the relative share of intraregional trade increased for most economies between 1999 and 2010. This is due partly to trade-related advantages, such as proximity, lower transport costs, increased knowledge from repeated interaction, and cultural and historical affinity. The direction of trade is also influenced by preferential trade agreements that a country has made with other economies. Though formal agreements on trade liberalization do not automatically increase trade, they nevertheless affect the direction of trade between the participating economies.

Limitations and Exceptions: Data on exports and imports are from the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Direction of Trade database and should be broadly consistent with data from other sources, such as the United Nations Statistics Division's Commodity Trade (Comtrade) database. All high-income economies and major low- and middle-income economies report trade data to the IMF on a timely basis, covering about 85 percent of trade for recent years. Trade data for less timely reporters and for countries that do not report are estimated using reports of trading partner countries. Therefore, data on trade between developing and high-income economies should be generally complete. But trade flows between many low- and middle-income economies - particularly those in Sub-Saharan Africa - are not well recorded, and the value of trade among low- and middle-income economies may be understated.

Aggregation method: Weighted average

Periodicity: Annual

Classification

Topic: Private Sector & Trade Indicators

Sub-Topic: Exports