EU/SA Trade

South Africa’s trade balance with the European Union is moving in the right direction, with exports outpacing imports. But SA could have a much, much better story to tell, and not be mainly reliant on the demand for commodities post-Covid … if it was fully exploiting its trade pact with the European Union. That’s the upshot of a recent EU-funded study looking to identify opportunities for greatly increasing trade and investment between SA and the EU, which has found that South Africa is leaving hundreds of billions in potential trade and investment on the table. Michael Avery talks to Roberto Cecutti, the head of trade at the EU embassy in Pretoria & Duane Newman, a Partner at EY Cova