The UK’s export credit agency, UK Export Finance (UKEF), is to double its financial support for trade with South Africa.
An additional £1.75 billion will be available for UK companies exporting to South Africa and for South African buyers of UK goods and services. The new money will take the total available to £3.5 billion.
The move was announced as International Trade Secretary Dr Liam Fox started a visit to South Africa and Mozambique aimed at boosting trade with the two countries.
Total trade in goods and services between the UK and South Africa (exports and imports) was £8.1 billion in 2015 according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). That represented a rise of 5.2% since 2014.
For the UK and Mozambique, total trade in goods and services was £284 million in 2015, while trade between the UK and Africa as a whole was worth £30.8 billion that year.
African investment into the UK grew by 500% between 2005 and 2014, with British investment in Africa more than doubling over the same period.
Describing the UK leaving the EU as an opportunity to forge independent trading arrangements with growing economies around the world, Dr Fox said: “That is why as an international economic department, we are making billions of pounds of additional financial support available to UK exporters and buyers of UK goods and services in South Africa.”
The International Trade Secretary also announced that UKEF is offering UK businesses wider access to government-backed overseas investment insurance (OII) which will protect those UK companies investing abroad.
