South Africa’s competitiveness against its main competitors in the market of pears imported by the EU28

This paper presents a quantitative analysis of the competitiveness of pear exports from South Africa (SA) to the European Union (EU) market against competing countries such as Argentina, Chile and China. This paper uses the Constant Market Share (CMS) methodology, which enables one to analyse export changes in order to quantify the competitiveness factor, and its separation into general or specified competitiveness. This analysis is performed for two periods – 2002–2007 and 2008–2013 – in order to test if the 2007–2008 global economic and financial crisis had a significant impact on the South African pear trade. Thus, the main objective of this work is to investigate if SA lost competitiveness during these years in relation to its competitors. The results show evidence that, before the global economic and financial crisis, the structural effect of the SA exports contributed most to the sales growth of pears to the EU, and a general competitiveness effect contributed to a lesser extent. After the crisis, exports continued to grow but at a slower rate, and that the composition of the contribution to the sales growth to the EU changed completely. From 2007 onwards, specified competitiveness was the main contributor to the export growth of SA pears, even counteracting the negative, post-crisis impact suffered by the the exports’ structural effect.