Swedish-South African commercial relations date back over a century. During this period, Swedish companies have contributed significantly to local growth aspirations. The performance of the South African economy improved this past year due to the global recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic as China eased its lockdown procedures.
The South African government remains committed to seeing growth in the short to medium term. This includes expanding the country’s baseload generation capacity, improving investments in strategic infrastructure, promoting industrial expansion, and strengthening enabling conditions by minimising red tape.
Hosting the largest concentration of multinational companies in the region, South Africa’s legacy as a commercial hub remains an attractive market for Swedish companies looking to export into the African region.
Sweden ranks at the top of several global indexes, from innovation to sustainability, entrepreneurship, and economic development. Being identified as a Swedish brand has positive implications for Swedish companies operating in South Africa. Sweden is already well-known, so Swedish businesses in South Africa usually don’t need to spend time explaining Sweden.
Sustainability and South Africa have been making the front pages around the world recently. One event that shook South Africa happened less than three years ago, when Cape Town came dangerously close to running out of water entirely. We see a steady trend that South African customers are increasingly considering sustainability in purchase decisions.
Please download the report to fully overview the results with a detailed analysis.
ABOUT THE SURVEY
For the past four years, Team Sweden has been conducting a Business Climate Survey with the purpose of gathering information from Swedish companies with operations in South Africa. The survey enables an informed understanding of the local commercial environment, citing pertinent issues affecting the trade in goods and services between Sweden and South Africa.
This year, the survey is based on a 76 per cent response rate after having been sent out to about 50 Swedish companies operating in South Africa directly through subsidiaries. The size of the companies is split among large, medium, and small companies.
We hope that this report will allow you to explore how different companies within different industries are affected by changes in the business climate and what they expect to see in the future.
