By Helmo Preuss

South African exports rose by 7.0% in rand terms and 25.7% in US dollar terms in 2004, as the strong rand failed to dent export growth due to strong demand from China and high commodity prices.

This compares with 12.7% decline in rand terms in 2003, while in US dollar terms export growth was 18.5% in 2003.

Exporters are reporting buoyant demand, which is sadly constrained by bottlenecks on the railways and harbours, not by the strong rand.

This constraint is being urgently addressed by government-owned transport utility Transnet, which will spend at least 14 billion rand over the next three years addressing the shortage of rolling stock and cranes at ports.

The opening of the new port of Ngqura in the Eastern Cape in September 2005 should also help to ease logistics bottlenecks.

Transnet's capital expenditure fell by 26.2% in the year to March 2004 to only 7.82 billion rand, even as many Transnet customers complained of poor service due to the lack of rolling stock.

The iron ore line only increased its tonnage shipped by 5.9% to 27 million tons in the year to end March 2004, whereas Chinese imports of iron ore surged by 34.9% in the first half of 2004 to 97.75 million tons.

The Department of Minerals and Energy is still in the process of compiling data for 2004 and only expects the data to be available at the end of February 2005.