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Seite 22
Artikel zu den Wirtschaftsbeziehungen
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Fortsetzung von Seite 21: in which they promised to honour their social respon- sibility by guaranteeing human rights, equality for workers, and programmes to help blacks. Sanctions had the advantage of keeping away foreign competition, and Germany competed only with the UK to be the country‘s number one econo- mic partner. When apartheid ended, everything changed radically. After years of isolation, local firms were suddenly faced with global competitors. Also, to speed up its membership of the World Trade Organi- zation, the South African government removed mea- sures that bad protected the local industry. At the same time, companies came under pressure to globalize. All of this created problems for German firms; but at the same time it brought opportunities. Develop- ments in the motor industry are a good example. Firms had been producing small volumes for local markets, and productivity was low. In 1995, for example, a typical factory produced one car in 63 hours, compared to one car in 18 hours in the US. In 1997, sales at Volkswagen South Africa (VWSA) were 16 per cent lower than the year before. In contrast, VW‘s global sales were up 6.5 per cent. Ferdinand Piech, head of VW in Germany at the time, took immediate action. He installed a new managing director and gave VWSA a contract to supply the UK with 68,000 Golfs. The company |
began to globalize, and by 2000 it was earning R3 billion
(about €470 million at the time) in foreign exchange. BMW and DaimlerChrysler went through much
the same process, pouring millions of rands into upgrading their
factories and globalizing.Today, DaimlerChrysler in South Africa
exports 75 per cent of its cars. The motor industry has also attracted a new group of German investors: suppliers of components. By 2002, exports of motor vehicle components had grown to €3 billion. The motor industry is now one of South Africa‘s largest earners of foreign exchange, with analysts saying that it will probably beat gold as the country‘s chief foreign exchange earner in 2004. Hamburg-based motor component supplier Allexim Handel GmbH is the kind of new investor South Africa likes to see. Like most developing economies, South Africa exports mostly raw and processed materials, and imports mainly finished products. Allexim Handel has a factory in Pietermaritzburg (Alltube Proprietary Limited) that uses South African aluminium to make components for car cooling systems. Another area that is booming is tourism. In 2003, tourism accounted for eight per cent of the country‘s GDP. Germans made up the second-largest group of foreign tourists after the British. Business Spotlight 21 |
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Textquelle: Wirtschaftsmagazin Business Spotlight
Homepage:
www.afrika-immobilien.de
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