Russia is South Africa’s fourth largest trading partner within the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) grouping. In 2022, China accounted for 9.4% of South Africa’s exports, while India had 4.5%, Brazil 0.4% and Russia only 0.2%, according to the South African Revenue Service (Sars).
China dominated South Africa’s imports with a 20.2% share, while India’s share was 7.2%, Brazil had a 1.4% share and Russia managed only a 0.5% share.
In rand terms, exports to China totalled R188.4 billion, while exports to India were R90.1bn, exports to Brazil R8.3bn and exports to Russia only R4.6bn.
South Africa imported goods worth R367.4bn from China, R130.6bn from India, R26.1bn from Brazil and R9.2bn from Russia, resulting in a trade surplus in favour of China worth R179bn, in favour of India of R40.5bn, in favour of Brazil R17.8bn and in favour of Russia R4.6bn.
The very small share of trade with Russia in 2022 may be due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February, 24, 2022 that resulted in American and European sanctions on Russia that disrupted supply chains with Russia.
In 2021, Russia imported only R6.1bn of South African goods for a 0.3% share of total exports, while Russia exported R9.2bn to South Africa for a 0.7% share of total imports.
This shows that supply chain disruptions had more of any impact on South African exports to Russia, while Russian exports to South Africa remained virtually the same, declining by only R54.5 million.
What is surprising is that the decline in South African exports to Russia was not broad-based with five out of 23 categories actually showing an increase in 2022 compared with 2021.
The biggest beneficiary of this was the vegetables category, which includes fruit and grains. This category rose by R429m to R3.747bn for a massive 81.1% of South African exports to Russia in 2022. No other category managed to have a favourable swing of R12m.
Export declines were concentrated in mineral products, which saw a large R841m drop to only R199m from more than R1bn in 2021. This took its share of South African exports to Russia to 4.3% from 17.1%.
There were five other export categories that suffered declines of more than R100m. These were machinery (R557m), products of iron and steel (R143m), vehicles (R138m), prepared foodstuffs (R113m) and chemicals (R103m).
The change in imports from Russia was much more mixed with eight of 23 categories showing an improvement in 2022 relative to 2021.
The biggest beneficiary was chemicals, which includes fertilisers, which increased by almost R2bn to R4.748bn, taking its share of Russian exports to South Africa to 51.9% from 30.2%.
The largest loser was products of iron and steel, which lost R1.337bn to R1.557bn. In 2021, this had the largest share of Russian exports to South Africa at 31.4%, but this share dropped to 17.0% in 2022. The other large losers were precious metals (R443m), mineral products (R344m) and vegetables (R173m).
Helmo Preuss: Economist at Forecaster Ecosa
BUSINESS REPORT