South Africa

The net FDI position (value) for UK investment into South Africa was £8.6 billion at the end of 2006. This suggests UK investment into South Africa is the highest of all seven SDD+2 countries. (View UK FDI analysis by sector for 2006)

Key points:

• In the 2006 UK ONS data the financial services sector is the dominant destination of UK investment, accounting for almost 75% of the total.
• South Africa has the lowest share of manufacturing investment at less than 3% of total UK investment.
• The data for earlier years suggests that the retail and wholesale, and mining and quarrying sectors also receive a significant amount of investment from the UK, although the data are not available in 2006 for reasons of confidentiality.
• The data for South Africa is also inconsistent over time and the 2006 total for UK investment is 37% lower than the 2005 figure. This suggests significant fluctuations in levels of investment and disinvestment, but may also reflect currency fluctuations and variations in data reliability.
• The proportion of UK investment excluded for reasons of confidentiality is also highly variable over time. The 2006 data actually has the lowest proportion of unaccounted investments by sector, at just 12%.