ANNUAL CONGRESS OF THE 3rd PUBLIC
SECTOR ECONOMISTS’ FORUM
DATE: 28 November 2011 to 30 November 2011
Input prepared by Quantec
Who is Quantec?
Quantec is a South African consultancy providing economic and financial data, business and country
intelligence, and quantitative analytical software for more than 18 years.
Data and Analysis.
• We maintain and distribute a comprehensive set of economic data collections covering RSA
macroeconomic, RSA regional socio-economic, RSA industry and RSA international trade data as
part of our EasyData service.
• We publish a broad range of proprietary and third-party databases on the internet through our
easy-to-use web-based system.
• We develop custom solutions for:
– Socio-economic and financial databases
– Market analysis and segmentation
– Business and country intelligence
• We do modelling, analysis and forecasting for:
– Economic impact assessment
– Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) modelling
– Structural macro-econometric modelling
– Economic risk assessment
• We provide and facilitate training in statistical and econometric methods
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Who is Quantec? (cont.)
Country and Business Intelligence
Quantec is the African representative of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a subsidiary of the
Economist Group & Pearson PLC. The EIU is the world's foremost provider of country, industry and
management analysis. The EIU has developed a range of services that provide continuously updated,
comprehensive analysis on over 200 countries. They are widely respected for the accuracy and
independence of their analysis. Although other sources of international information exist, only the EIU
can provide a comprehensive and consistent world view for making important cross border business
decisions.
Quantitative Analytical Software.
Quantec is the African representative of:
• QMS EViews (econometric modelling) – San Francisco, USA
• STATA Corporation (statistical analysis) – Texas, USA
• Palisade @Risk and Decision Tools Suite (risk analysis) – Ithaca, New York
• OxMetrics (econometric modelling) – Oxford, United Kingdom
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What is EasyData?
• Quantec’s EasyData service provides local and international clients with South African macroeconomic, socio-economic, financial, industry and international trade indicators in a simple webbased interface.
• All data is organised hierarchically in 4 separate databases that can be accessed individually or
treated as a comprehensive collection.
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RSA Economic Indicators
This time-series database incorporates a comprehensive set of indicator time-series covering all
aspects of the South African economy. The emphasis is on general economic indicators, financial and
capital markets, public finance, balance of payments statistics, national accounts and industry data.
The data are grouped as follows
• Agricultural statistics - Department of Agriculture
• Automobile sales – NAAMSA
• Crime statistics - SAPD
• House price indices – ABSA
• International trade – SARS
• Mineral production and sales – Department of Minerals and Energy
• Petroleum prices – SAPIA
• RSA general economic indicators – BER, NPI, etc.
• RSA macroeconomic and financial indicators – SARB
• Short-term indicators – Statistics South Africa
• Steel and engineering industries statistics – SEIFSA
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RSA Regional Indicators
The South African Regional Market Indicators service provides a unique, disaggregated and consistent
view of South Africa’s socio-economic structure and market potential on a regional basis down to
district and municipal level. The data is compiled by combining a regional demographic and industry
framework, spanning more than three decades, with a comprehensive set of census, survey and timeseries indicator data. The result is a systematic and up-to-date set of actual and standardised regional
indicators for the South African regions.
• Comprehensive coverage of consumer demographics, income, expenditure, housing and
infrastructure.
• Demographics at the individual level including poverty indicators, HIV/AIDS incidence estimates,
education & training.
• Labour market indicators such as employment by skill, formal and informal and unemployment.
• Detailed data on a full range of industries.
• Key macroeconomic estimates, including GDP, employment and trade.
• Aggregate data covering provinces, metropolitan areas, and user defined areas based on district
and municipal council.
• The database is updated and expanded continually as new and primary data becomes available.
• Advanced functionality to allow you to manage data easily. Functions include cross-tabulation,
charting, exporting to Excel and sorting/selecting/ranking variables by regional aggregation levels.
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RSA Regional Indicators (cont):
Quantec Regional Indicators are continuously improved with data based on client’s current areas of interest. Recent
enhancements to regional indicators include:
•
15 year annual socio-economic time series data for 503 local municipalities (main place for 6 metropolitan municipalities) Demographics, Development Indicators, Labour, Household Income & Expenditure, Income & Production, Capital Formation
topics.
Source: Statistics SA - Community Survey 2007; Income and Expenditure Surveys; Industry Censuses; Large sample
industry surveys; Mid-year Population Estimates 2010; National Accounts; October/General Household Surveys; Population
Census 2001; Population Census 1996; Quarterly Employment Surveys; Quarterly Labour Force Surveys; Surveys of
Employment and Earnings; SA Actuarial Society - Demographic/AIDS model; SA Reserve Bank - Household Consumption
Expenditure; National Accounts; Quantec - Standardised Industry databank
•
15 year annual import & export data by District Council by World region (source/destination) on HS6-digit & SIC2-digit level.
Source: SA Revenue Service.
•
10 year monthly crime time series data for 1120 police station areas en 30 crime types. Source: SA Police Service
•
10 year annual ordinary school sector time series data - learners, educators and schools for 95 education districts. Source:
DOE
•
6 year annual higher education time series data - learners, educators and institutions, major field of study, formal
qualification, contact/distance/FTE enrolment, success rates for 23 universities. Source: DOE
•
Various StatsSA data on a regional level
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RSA Standardised Industry
The industry time-series database provides a unique, disaggregated and consistent long-term view of
South Africa’s economic structure by industry. The data is compiled by combining a consistent inputoutput framework spanning three and a half decades with a comprehensive set of industry and
national accounting indicators. The result is a systematic and up-to-date set of standardised industry
time-series for South Africa. The emphasis of the database is on the input, output, capital employed
and labour utilisation structure of each industry. The industry classification follows the 28
manufacturing industries (3-digit SIC scheme) reported by Statistics South Africa (SSA) in its monthly
sales, production, price and employment releases and a 2-digit scheme for the 17 non-manufacturing
industries. The database is organised by industry and the structure of each industry is explained by up
to 400 variables. Various units (nominal, real, price index, etc.) describe each variable.
Demand side (by industry)
• Intermediate sales/output
• Private consumption expenditure
• Government consumption expenditure
• Capital goods output
Supply side (by industry)
• Intermediate purchase/inputs
• Employment by skill level
• Labour remuneration
• Value added (GDP)
• Gross operating surplus
Ratios and multipliers (by industry)
• Labour productivity
• Capital productivity
• Inventories investment
• Exports by destination
• Imports by origin
• Total sales/output
• Output prices (producer, export, import,
intermediate, final demand excluding
exports)
• Net operating surplus
• Capital consumption by asset type
• Capital formation by asset type
• Capital stock by asset type
• Indirect taxes paid
• Subsidies received
• Input prices (intermediate, GDP, total
input)
• Capacity utilisation
• Multifactor productivity
• Export intensity
• Import intensity
• Output, income, import and employment
multipliers
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RSA International Trade Indicators
The South African international trade time-series database provides a detailed up-to-date historical
overview of South Africa’s external goods trade. Quantec has developed the EasyData trade database
as a monthly frequency database of South African trade by destination and origin of trade as collected
by the SARS Customs and Excise Division as well as from several other sources, such as the UN
Comtrade and the Department of Minerals and Energy. Following is some of the features of the
database.
• Import and export data for the HS 8, 6, 4 and 2-digit and 22-chapter commodity classification at
annual, quarterly and monthly frequencies (250,000 primary time series).
• Import and export data by Standard Industrial Classification (SIC Rev 3) 3, 2 and 1-digit industries
at annual, quarterly and monthly frequencies.
• Over 170 countries and 20 regions (EC, NAFTA, SADC, Africa, etc.) of origin for imports or
destination for exports.
• Both value and volume data are available for exports and imports (volume data only for HS 8digit). Value data is in Rand and US$.
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Why use Quantec EasyData?
Accuracy and completeness of data
• Quantec is widely respected for the accuracy and independence of economic analysis.
• Our economists estimate and forecast data to supplement our datasets.
Broad client base
• We have more than 300 clients spanning government (including academic institutions) and private sector.
• Some of our clients include Gauteng Provincial Government, Eastern Cape Treasury, KZN Dept. of Economic
Development, UNISA, UJ, Standard Bank and Urban-Econ.
Access anywhere
• Our data is delivered online via our EasyData website, providing our users with easy-to-use navigation, analytical
tools, graphic presentation capabilities and the ability to download any of our data in MS Excel, CSV and other
popular file formats.
• Logon via usernames and passwords or IP authentication.
• We can provide institution-wide access with a subscription i.e. access to all departments within a province for a
provincial subscription.
Reliable data sources
• STATS SA, Reserve Bank, UN Comtrade, SARS, the DTI, and the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Updates are on time
• Updates are implemented on a daily basis as they are released by the various primary data sources.
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Contact details
For more information contact Quantec
Web:
Email:
Tel:
Fax:
www.quantec.co.za
[email protected]
+27 (0)12 361 5154
+27 (0)12 348 5874
Address:
Postal:
420 Sussex Avenue, Lynnwood,
Pretoria, 0081, South Africa
PO Box 35466, Menlo Park,
Pretoria, 0102, South Africa
Follow us on Twitter! @QuantecResearch
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