Trade and Industry Monitor Volume 37

In his paper, Albert Berry - professor of economics and director of the Latin American programme at the Centre for International Studies of the University of Toronto - identifies the impacts of globalisation and liberalisation on inequality. He finds that data deficiencies and a lack of in-depth analysis of inequality, poverty and their determinants - especially in developing countries - have delayed a better understanding of how these important indicators of social and economic well-being have been changing over time, and how they have been affected by globalisation and liberalisation.

This article by Nimrod Zalk, Chief Director: Strategic Competitiveness Unit of the dti first appeared in the Business Day of 14 March 2006. Zalk emphasises that there are almost no historical examples of countries that have industrialised without active and robust industrial and trade policies. He also points out that the now-developed economies all industrialised behind substantial tariff barriers and various other forms of support for industry and technological development. Therefore, an industrial policy is not an ideological but a pragmatic choice - one which developing countries have to take in order to achieve their own development process, co-ordinating it with other major policies such as macroeconomic, skills and technology policies, and using current instruments and institutions.

This paper by Prof. Merle Holden, head of the School of Economics and Management at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Durban and Landon McMillan, an economist at TIPS, supports the view that the EU-SA FTA stimulated both imports and exports, while for SADC, exports were stimulated but the results for imports were ambiguous. The AGOA results were far less significant overall, suggesting that preferential access for South African exports into the US had not been particularly beneficial.