Understanding and Characterizing the Services Sector in South Africa: An Overview

Haroon Bhorat, Francois Steenkamp, Christopher Rooney, Nomsa Kachingwe and Adrienne Lees ()
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Adrienne Lees: University of Cape Town

Working Papers from University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit

Abstract: The South African services sector is large and growing. This coupled with declining employment shares in manufacturing and mining (i.e. deindustrialisation) suggests that South Africa is a de facto service-orientated economy. Employment patterns in services reveal a segmentation that is characterised by high-productivity, high-wage services, low-productivity, low-wage services, and government services. There has been sustained growth in services exports in the post-1994 period but the composition is biased toward traditional services. Increased entry into developing country markets is characterised by increasingly sophisticated services. A key driver of export growth is the expansion of FDI into developed country markets, and increasingly, into developing country markets, particularly African markets.

Keywords: Services; economic development; South Africa; economic growth; structural change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L80 O14 O55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 77 pages
Date: 2018-10
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published in Working Paper Series by the Development Policy Research Unit, October 2018, pages 1-77

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Related works:
Working Paper: Understanding and characterizing the services sector in South Africa: An overview (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ctw:wpaper:201803

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