Sector Strategy Development

In 2006, the Department of Trade and Industry (the dti) commissioned TIPS to undertake a project on trends and forecasts in key sectors of the economy in the context of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (ASGISA) - a strategy aimed at accelerating economic growth, raising employment and reducing poverty.

The aim of the study was to further the 'process of discovery' essential to designing, implementing and adjusting targeted interventions to open bottlenecks and unlock the growth and employment potential in the identified sectors.

Special emphasis was placed on five ASGI sectors - Primary Agriculture, Agro-processing, Biofuels, Arts & Craft and Film & TV - with in-depth quantitative and qualitative analyses of both historical and forecasted future trends provided.

A further stage of this project will encompass a modeling exercise based on expected growth rates flowing from ASGISA interventions to assess the likely impact of these interventions on the South African economy at the macroeconomic sectoral levels. This will allow a comparison between the 'baseline' growth performance of the economy and the 'accelerated' growth performance to provide a guide as to the extent to which South Africa will meet its target of halving unemployment and poverty by 2014.