Southern African Customs Union (...1999) Exports, Imports & Trade Data
Year
19951999
ZA1 · country profile
Southern African Customs Union (...1999)
How does Southern African Customs Union (...1999)’s trade profile look? Level of exports and imports over thirty years, structural composition, partner concentration, and the position on the economic-complexity frontier.
exports 1999$34.9B
imports 1999$24.3B
balance$10.6B
eci rank#42 / 214
products exported4,777
Figure 1
Southern African Customs Union (...1999): merchandise exports and imports, 1995-1999
Exports grew from $27.4B in 1995 to $34.9B in 1999, a CAGR of 6.2%. The merchandise balance sits at $10.6B, which is 30% of exports , a simple scale normalisation over the available BACI series. Note that exports are f.o.b. and imports c.i.f., so a meaningful portion of the gap reflects freight and insurance baked into the import valuation rather than a real shortfall in receipts (CIF/FOB spreads typically run 5-10% per UNCTAD/IMF BOP methodology, but country-specific values vary). The more conventional open-economy metric is the current- account balance as % of GDP, reported on the /macro/ZA1 page.
Source: CEPII BACI 202501 (retrieved 2026-04-28), f.o.b. exports and c.i.f. imports, summed across all reporters.Figure 1b
The structural change in what a country exports, from agriculture to manufactures to services, or between HS sections, is one of the most studied transitions in development economics (Imbs & Wacziarg 2003; Hausmann, Hwang & Rodrik 2007). The chart below shows the five largest HS sections of Southern African Customs Union (...1999)’s exports in 1999, plotted back thirty years.
Figure 2
Top-5 HS sections of exports, 1995-1999
In 1999, the top three HS sections account for 56% of merchandise exports that map to an HS92 section, a rough measure of sectoral concentration at the coarsest classification level. Shares here are over BACI exports that carry a valid HS92 section mapping, so the five-section series does not sum to 100% of total exports: some HS6 codes (newer HS revisions, non-standard codes) fall outside the 21-section mapping. Note that the top-5 sections are selected by share, so a section that was dominant in 1995 but has since fallen out of the top 5 will not appear on the chart.
Figure 2b
Export basket by HS chapter, 1999 · top-30 $31.4B of $34.9B total
Figure 2c
Import basket by HS chapter, 1999 · top-30 $21.2B of $24.3B total
Who it sells to
Figure 3a
World map of export destinations, 1999
Figure 3b
Top 12 export destinations, 1999
Economic complexity
The Economic Complexity Index (ECI) of Hidalgo & Hausmann (2009, PNAS) ranks countries by the productive knowledge embedded in their export basket. Countries that export many products, and whose products are also exported by few others, score high. ECI is predictive of subsequent income growth and structural transformation; see Hausmann et al. (2014, The Atlas of Economic Complexity, MIT Press) for the full methodology and the comparative country atlas.
Figure 4a
Southern African Customs Union (...1999): ECI trajectory, 1995-1999
Current ECI: 0.86, ranked #42 of 214 economies in 1999. ECI is zero-centered; positive values mean above-median complexity.
Method: Hidalgo & Hausmann (2009) “The Building Blocks of Economic Complexity” PNAS 106(26): 10570-10575. Applied to BACI RCA matrix.Figure 4b
Export concentration (HHI) and product count, 1995-1999
1999 HHI = 0.020, equivalent to about 51.2 equally-sized product lines.Southern African Customs Union (...1999) exports 4,777 distinct HS6 products. Rising HHI or falling effective-N indicates loss of diversification.
Revealed comparative advantage (Balassa 1965) says a country is specialised in a product when its share of that product’s world exports exceeds the country’s share of all world exports. A stronger version asks: which HS6 lines does the country lead the world in? The table below lists the ten largest export lines (by value) where Southern African Customs Union (...1999) ranks in the world top-5 in 1999, restricted to products with at least US$10M of global trade so tiny niches don’t crowd out economically meaningful positions. This is the “niche leadership” view: products the country is not just diversified in, but competitive at the frontier.
Figure 5
Southern African Customs Union (...1999): top 10 HS6 lines with world top-5 rank, 1999
Peer countries by structural profile
Which economies share the closest structural profile to Southern African Customs Union (...1999)? Each country is placed in a three-dimensional space of economic complexity (ECI), log GDP per capita, and log total exports, each standardised to zero mean and unit variance in 1999. The five nearest neighbours by Euclidean distance in that space are Southern African Customs Union (...1999)’s closest structural peers, similar on productive-capability, income level, and scale of external trade. This is a trade-specific adaptation of the synthetic-control “donor pool” logic (Abadie, Diamond & Hainmueller 2010).
Figure 6
Southern African Customs Union (...1999): five closest structural peers, 1999
No data available for this chart.
Insufficient coverage across ECI, WDI GDP-pc, and BACI exports for Southern African Customs Union (...1999) to identify structural peers.
Method: z-score each dimension (ECI, log GDP-pc, log total exports) across the universe of countries with all three observations in the latest year; rank by Euclidean distance. Abadie, Diamond & Hainmueller (2010) “Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative Case Studies,” JASA 105(490): 493-505.
Margins of export growth
Hummels & Klenow (2005, “The variety and quality of a nation’s exports,” American Economic Review 95(3): 704-723) decomposed cross-country export growth into the extensive margin (exporting more distinct HS6 lines) and the intensive margin (exporting more value per existing line). The decomposition is informative because the two margins respond to different policy levers: trade-cost reductions and discovery push the extensive margin (Melitz 2003), while productivity and demand push the intensive.
Figure 7
Margins of export growth, 1996-1999
Over 3 years, total exports grew at 4.0%/yr. Decomposition: HS6 line count moved from 4,791 to 4,777 (extensive margin -0.1%/yr); average value per line moved from $6.5M to $7.3M (intensive margin 4.1%/yr). The intensive margin dominates, which by Hummels-Klenow logic indicates growth via deepening sales of existing lines (productivity, scale, or quality).
Method: Hummels & Klenow (2005) AER 95(3): 704-723. Extensive margin = CAGR of distinct HS6 export lines. Intensive margin = CAGR of (total exports / line count). Total CAGR ≈ extensive + intensive (log-linear approximation).
Export basket on the complexity frontier
Figure 8
Southern African Customs Union (...1999): export value vs. product complexity (PCI), 1999
Related
Research index, analytical pieces grounded in BACI flows and gravity covariates
Sector monitor, quarterly deep dives on 12 HS-defined sectors
Source: CEPII BACI 202501 (retrieved 2026-04-28) crossed with HS92 section codes. Shares are over the HS6-mapped universe; HS6 codes without an HS92 section fall outside the 21-section totals.
Cell area is proportional to 1999 export value. The treemap shows the top 30 HS chapters (HS2 level) of Southern African Customs Union (...1999)’s exports; cells are colour-coded by HS section so structurally related chapters share a hue (e.g. minerals, machinery, textiles). The largest chapter, HS 71 , Natural, cultured pearls; precious, semi-precious stones; precious metals, metals clad with precious metal, and articles thereof; imitation jewellery; coin, represents 27.9% of the top-30chapter total shown. Compared to Figure 2’s five-section trajectory, this view exposes which specific chapters within the dominant sections drive the overall composition.
Source: CEPII BACI 202501 (retrieved 2026-04-28), f.o.b. exports of HS6 codes aggregated to HS2 chapters, 1999. Restricted to top 30 chapters by value.
Cell area is proportional to 1999 import value. The treemap shows the top 30 HS chapters (HS2 level) of Southern African Customs Union (...1999)’s imports; cells are colour-coded by HS section so structurally related chapters share a hue. The largest import chapter, HS 84 , Machinery and mechanical appliances, boilers, nuclear reactors; parts thereof, represents 21.3% of the top-30 chapter total shown. Read alongside Figure 2b to compare what Southern African Customs Union (...1999) sells abroad against what it buys in.
Source: CEPII BACI 202501 (retrieved 2026-04-28), c.i.f. imports of HS6 codes aggregated to HS2 chapters, 1999. Restricted to top 30 chapters by value.
Each country is shaded by the bilateral value of Southern African Customs Union (...1999)’s exports to it in 1999, binned into quintiles. Southern African Customs Union (...1999) itself is tinted in amber as the origin; white indicates destinations with no recorded bilateral flow. The map makes regional dependency structures visible, neighbours, former colonial ties, bloc partners, in ways a top-list ordering hides.
Partner concentration measures market exposure. The single largest destination absorbs 10% of Southern African Customs Union (...1999)’s exports; the top 3 together take 28%. Concentrated partner bases make bilateral shocks (trade wars, recessions) first-order.
Source: CEPII BACI 202501 (retrieved 2026-04-28), bilateral exports 1999. Shares are over total exports.
Southern African Customs Union (...1999) holds a top-5 world-export position in 10of its largest export lines (HS6 products with ≥ US$10M world trade, 1999). The leading niche is HS 710812 , Metals: gold, non-monetary, unwrought (but not powder) , where it ranks #3 globally with 13.4% of world exports. Dominant niches are the revealed-comparative-advantage anchors a trade-shock or industrial- policy analysis should start from.
Source: CEPII BACI 202501 (retrieved 2026-04-28), HS6 exporter rankings, 1999. Restricted to products with ≥ US$10M world trade. Method: Balassa (1965) RCA taken to its rank-based extreme, top-5 world rank is a stringent specialisation test.
Each dot is one HS6 product in Southern African Customs Union (...1999)’s basket with more than US$1M in exports in 1999 (long-tail marginal exports below that floor are filtered out so the scatter is legible; the filter drops many HS6 codes for small economies and few for large ones). Horizontal = export value (log), vertical = Product Complexity Index (PCI). Dots upper-right are high-value, high-complexity products (machinery, precision instruments). Lower-left products carry less productive knowledge per dollar. A basket shifted toward the upper-right correlates with higher ECI and higher income.
Method: PCI from Hausmann-Hidalgo (2009) spectral-eigenvector decomposition of the country-product RCA matrix. Basket restricted to HS6 exports > US$1M in the latest year.
where Southern African Customs Union (...1999) is exposed
Insufficient supplier-dependency data to rank exposures.
where Southern African Customs Union (...1999) could grow
Carbonates: bismuth carbonate (283693): proximity 0.21 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +6.10, world market $4,767. Ranked by density × complexity (product space 1999). See product →
Heterocyclic compounds: n.e.s. in heading no. 2933 (293390): proximity 0.14 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +5.80, world market $13.3bn. Ranked by density × complexity (product space 1999). See product →
Nickel: powders and flakes (750400): proximity 0.21 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +3.82, world market $360.7m. Ranked by density × complexity (product space 1999). See product →
Wood pulp: semi-chemical (470500): proximity 0.18 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +4.26, world market $623.5m. Ranked by density × complexity (product space 1999). See product →
Railway or tramway maintenance or service vehicles: whether or not self-propelled (eg workshops, cranes, ballast tampers, trackliners, testing coaches and track inspection vehicles) (860400): proximity 0.18 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +4.12, world market $450.5m. Ranked by density × complexity (product space 1999). See product →