Once concentrated among a few largeeconomies, global flows of goods, services, and capital nowreach an ever larger number of economies worldwide. Globaltrade in goods and services increased 10 times between 1980and 2011, while FDI flows increased almost 30-fold. Thesales from foreign-owned firms amount to $26 trillion. Asmany as 3,000 bilateral investment treaties have been signedto create the framework of deep agreements needed not onlyto facilitate the global movement of final goods andservices but also to internationalize entire processes ofproduction. All these flows have grown over time, creatingincreasingly dense and complex networks. This note isintended provide an overview of SACU countries’participation and performance in GVCs, drawing on severaldata sources and indicators, and most importantly therecently released 189-country Eora multi-region-input-output(MRIO) database (Lenzen et al. 2012, 2013). Following thisintroduction, the note is structured in five additionalsections. Section two discusses in greater detail the scopeof the report, including the data sources and methodologicalapproaches, as well as their respective limitations. Sectionthree looks at structural integration in trade, includingthe degree to which SACU countries import and exportintermediates. Section four analyzes trends in value-addedexports as a first step in exploring GVC participation.Section five hones in on the core measures of GVCparticipation and a brief analysis of SACU countries’position in GVCs. Finally, section six concludes by bringingtogether the main findings from the analysis.
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