South Africa's Trade with Australia

everal international market selection models have been developed over the years to measure export potential for companies and countries. The models in question aim to identify those export markets offering the best opportunities for the exporting nation. That is, they attempt to select one or a few target markets from many. If the objective is to identify the best product categories to export to a given country, the models generally do not meet this objective. In order to address this objective, research was undertaken in respect of a particular destination country to analyze and compare the imports of a supplying (export) country in the context of the importing country's import profile with the purpose of identifying those products with the best export potential. In support of this market demand approach, this article reports on a time-series analysis of Australia's imports from South Africa compared with those from the rest of the world from 2001 to 2009. The research concludes that the proposed approach provides additional and unique insights at a detailed product-level which should prove valuable in the process of evaluating the export potential between the two countries.