With a population nearing 58 million and access to a region with over 350 million, combined with an enabling business environment and developed infrastructure, South Africa has continuously been an attractive market for Swedish export growth.
Today, South Africa is host to about 60 Swedish subsidiaries with additional Swedish brands represented across industries through partners and other third-party distributors.
Much like the rest of the world, South Africa’s business climate has been through challenging times due to the -19 pandemic. To support growth in the short to medium term, the president has announced an intensive infrastructure investment plan focused on job creation and stabilizing power supply. This will likely lead to economic recovery and the restoration of investor confidence and activity across the country’s key sectors.
It is also important to note that Covid-19 has exposed some of the country’s weaker attributes including inequality which is predicted to worsen compared to pre-pandemic rates. This is because the crisis has accelerated the transformative forces of digitalisation and automation meaning many of the jobs lost are unlikely to return.
53 per cent of the respondents indicating a profitable 2020. In addition, 27 per cent of Swedish companies that responded still managed to break even despite the challenging operating environment in 2020. Only 20 per cent of the responding companies recorded a loss in the 2020 financial year.
The purpose of this report is to increase the understanding of the performance of Swedish companies in South Africa while deepening our understanding of the opportunities and challenges that the South African market poses.
In addition, please download the report to fully overview the results with a detailed analysis.
ABOUT THE SURVEY
The survey was sent out to 54 Swedish companies in South Africa and the responses are based purely on their experience and existence within the market. Regarding the size of the responding companies at a global scale, 60 per cent are large corporations with over 1000 employees globally while 13 per cent are medium-sized companies with between 250 and 1000 employees globally. The remaining 27 per cent of the respondents are from small companies with less than 250 employees globally.
