加强南非商业环境的结构性改革

Structural Reforms toBolster South Africa’s Tidiane Kinda and Nasha Mavee SIP/2026/017 IMF Selected Issues Papers are prepared by IMF staff asbackground documentation for periodic consultations withmember countries.It is based on the information available atthe time it was completed on January 21, 2026. This paper is 2026MAR Authorized for distribution by Delia Velculescu IMF Selected Issues Papersare prepared by IMF staff as background documentation for periodicconsultations with member countries.It is based on the information available at the time it was ABSTRACT:South Africa stands out as having one of the most restrictive business environments amongpeers. Burdensome government regulations, especially for licensing and permitting, weak procurementpractices, and limited competition can pose risks to business confidence and investment, stifle innovation,increase compliance costs. Because they burden small firms disproportionately, they particularly inhibit jobcreation potential. Our econometric analysis, using cross-country firm-level data, finds that product marketregulations, notably related to licensing and permitting, hinder firms’ growth and productivity. This is particularly RECOMMENDED CITATION:Kinda, Tidiane and Mavee, Nasha. (2026). Structural Reforms to Bolster SouthAfrica’s Business Environment. IMF Selected Issues Paper, African Department, SIP/2026/17, Washington SELECTED ISSUES PAPERS Structural Reforms to Bolster South Africa Prepared by Tidiane Kinda and Nasha Mavee A. Background 1.South Africa’s growth has been too weak for too long. After a strong performance in the firstdecade following the end of Apartheid (1994-2007) when annual growth averaged 3.6 percent, output growthhas been lackluster. Average real growth of below 1 percent between 2008 and 2024 has led to a decline inreal per capita income to its 2007 level and an erosion of living standards for average South Africans. The 2.The country’s weak growth performance has been attributed to entrenched structural rigidities. These include inefficient state-owned enterprises operating in key sectors of the economy with associated recurrent infrastructure breakdowns, eroded state capacity, and high levels of bureaucracy.2Moreover, product-market rigidities have been identified as a major contributor to low business dynamism andsubdued employment opportunities (OECD, 2025a). Several empirical studies have illustrated that regulatory 3.South Africa stands out as having one of the most restrictive business environments acrossall OECD countries and G20 emerging economies(Figure 1). Burdensome administrative procedures,including communication and simplification of administrative and regulatory burden; interaction withstakeholders; regulations and competition impact evaluation; tariff barriers; barriers to entry in Service andnetwork sectors; as well as administrative and regulatory burdens are among the key factors of South Africa’s 4.Product-market reforms could deliver significant growth gains for South Africa. IMF (2025)highlighted that South Africa exhibits a significant gap to the business regulation frontier, particularly in relationwith bureaucratic costs and administrative requirements. Using local projections with country-level data, thepaper shows that implementing reforms to close 50 percent of South Africa’s gap relative to the EM frontier on 5.This paper employs an empirical analysis to identify the constraints posed by businessregulations on firm performance, with the aim of identifying potential reforms that can support overallproductivity and growth. In addition to complementing the theoretical country level analysis in IMF (2025),this paper explores empirically how regulatory burdens impede business growth, employment, and productivity B. Empirical Firm-Level Data Analysis 6.The analysis relies on data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys(WBES). The WBES arestandardized surveys conducted across large and representative samples of firms. This allows for national andinternational comparisons of productive performance across activities in the manufacturing and servicessectors. The WBES data include information on firms’ inputs (number of employees, intermediate 7.Various indicators can be used to assess firm performance, each with their strengths andweaknesses. This paper relies first on indicators that capture business dynamism, such as sales growth andemployment growth. To capture labor productivity, it uses a common performance indicator defined as theratio of value added or sales to the number of employees. While this indicator is immune from the usualmeasurement errors in the stock of capital, omitting capital from a performance indicator could be misleading, level of capital stock, and cost of intermediate inputs, assuming a basic Cobb-Douglas functional form: whereSAijkcaptures the sale of each firmi, in countryj, and sectork;Lijkrepresents the number ofemployees;Kijkthe level of capital stock an