ANT KATZ

Business between South Africa and Israel is booming. The big questions are: What is it worth and how fast is it growing? Neither SA nor Israeli authorities are able to provide reliable figures so Jewish Report tried to piece the puzzle together.

The answer would seem to be a massive bilateral business relationship between the two countries of more than R21 billion in 2014. And, according to Sars’ published statistics, trade in goods grew by 24 per cent last year!

The figure Sars (SA Revenue Service) gives for bilateral trade in the last calendar year, 2014, is R10,3 billion. Of this figure, SA exports to Israel were 7,2 billion, while SA imports from Israel were 3,1 billion – leaving SA with a R4,1 billion surplus.

The figures, derived from the Sars website, only cover trade in goods and do not include those for tourism or services.

Bilateral trade between the two countries in the calendar year 2013, according to Sars’ statistics, totalled R8,3 billion. Again it was South Africa which enjoyed a hefty surplus as it exported goods worth R5,5 billion to the Jewish state, while importing just R2,8 billion. This left SA with a R2,7 billion surplus.

The growth in bilateral trade, in rand terms, between 2013 and 2014 was 24 per cent.

The latest figures quoted on the Sars website this week are up to February 2015. These indicate bilateral trade between the countries of R500-odd million for the two months.

Tourism

Stats-SA provides the official figures for tourist arrivals in South Africa.

These figures show that, of the total 41 341 tourist arrivals in South Africa by Middle Eastern passport-holders, 22 116, or over half, were on Israeli passports.

Of these 22 116 arrivals by Israeli passport-holders, the vast majority (19 106), were coming to South Africa on holiday. 853 stated that they were coming for business purposes; 2 078 were in transit; and 49 entered SA to study.

SA Tourism’s figure for the average spend in South Africa by a foreign tourist flying into the country was R13 200 in 2012. Israeli tourists are likely to spend more, says an industry source, but to conservatively quantify the value of Israeli tourism to SA, it would be better to use the average.

Assuming this average increased slightly to R14 000 by 2014, it would have added R310-odd million to the SA economy.

Israel’s trade consul in South Africa, Itai Melchoir, assisted Jewish Report Online to obtain the official Israeli figures for South African passport-holders who travelled to Israel in 2014. These were listed as 20,000 entrances (which is likely a rounded off figure).

Here, too, the scales are weighed in South Africa’s favour. As tourism is considered an import (foreign money coming into SA) – this too adds to SA’s surplus position vis-a-vis bilateral economic benefit.

What is interesting is that 4 000 of the SA tourist arrivals in Israel are listed as having been by land. Melchoir says that there is no presentation of passports between Israel and Palestine. Howeve, arrivals by sea fall into the same category, which would likely mean most of these arrivals would be from Israel’s fast-growing cruise-ship traffic.

The average tourist in Israel spent $1 549 in 2012. At today’s exchange rate that would mean SA tourists to Israel spent R18 635 each, or R370-odd million in all.

Thus bilateral tourism was worth almost R700 million last year.

Services

There are no reliable figures to quantify the value of services provided by one country to the other as they are not monitored on any government databases.

Jewish Report Online did manage to get some “guestimates” from the various authorities from both SA and Israel and it would seem safe to assume that this figure could well exceed the trade in goods – and is probably growing at least as fast as the trade figures..

And, in terms of services, Israel would likely be selling more of these to South Africa than vice versa.

This equates to a massive bilateral business relationship between the two countries of more than R21 billion in 2014.

And growing fast!​