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I've got as far as the introduction so far. I got waylaid by this part:
In his State of the Nation address on 8 February 2008, while referring to Eskom’s plight at the time, President Thabo Mbeki said “We are a minerals resource economy. We must therefore continue to support the mining industry. It is inevitable that if we are to continue on our growth path as a manufacturing country, we will also have to continue supporting the processing industry.”
South Africa's GDP can be calculated by adding the value added by each of the 11 industry groupings in South Africa. The 11 industries and their relative weighting in calculating GDP are: agriculture, forestry and fishing = 3.9%, mining and quarrying = 5%, electricity and water = 3.2%, manufacturing = 18.7%, construction = 2.8%, wholesale and retail trade, hotels and restaurants = 12.4%, transport and communication = 10.8%, finance, real estate and business services = 17.8%, community, social and personal services = 2.5%, general government services = 12.2% and other producers = 2.4%. Total value added by industries adds up to 91.7%. Taxes less subsidies on products account for the remaining 8.3%.
It is interesting to note that agriculture and mining has a very small weighting compared to what is generally perceived as very big contributors to the SA economy. These two sectors traditionally were very dominant, but since SA's re-integration into the global economy the structure of the economy has changed, from predominantly primary (agriculture and mining) to secondary (manufacturing) economy with a very big service component. The services and manufacturing sectors in SA have increased rapidly over the past decade, due mainly to the fact that foreign services and manufacturing companies have opened operations in SA.
That might be a little dated - their stats run to 2003. But in that search, I also found a page from Stats SA giving a breakdown of GDP over the years (page 14).
For 2007: value added by industry and gross domestic product at constant 2000 prices (R million)
It might help if people know which sectors are the real movers and shakers nowadays.
That also raised an eyebrow for me, but I was encouraged that the manufacturing industry was growing. Seeing the numbers raises a lot of questions in my mind though - mainly, why does the president think we are a minerals economy? Or is it that a large part of the manufacturing rests on the mineral production?
I think the point to take home is that the real money is in the value add. We need to be exporting finished product, not raw materials. Now how do you achieve that?
I was chewing over those Agriculture figures too. It makes you think a bit about the food inflation issue we have at the moment.
No. They are actual, but adjusted to 2000 price levels. My purpose was to show the relative contribution of the sectors rather than change trends.
The link above takes you to the source document, but I couldn't find a short cut to take you to page 14. On that page the figures go back to 1993, I think. I could add columns for other years if you want to see movement trends.
The avantage in the adjusted figures is that it makes meaningful comparisons fairly easy without having to discount the effects of inflation.
The link above takes you to the source document, but I couldn't find a short cut to take you to page 14. On that page the figures go back to 1993, I think. I could add columns for other years if you want to see movement trends.
I had a look at that, and that was when I got confused as to whether it was the change, or the absolute. When I read the text a bit earlier in the doc it seemed ambiguous - I'll just take another look.
I've added the 2000 and 1993 year figures to the table. It's in reverse order to what it should be (sorry about that), but looking at the figures side by side like that is actually really interesting.
Bear in mind the figures are adjusted to compensate for inflationary effects, so those are real changes!
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, I must say it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy!
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