Martin Cameron

Martin is the Managing Director of Trade Research Advisory (Pty) Ltd, a spin-out company of the North-West University’s TRADE research entity. A key focus is the application of the TRADE-DSM™ methodology, which was developed by NWU’s TRADE-DSM research team under the leadership of Prof Wilma Viviers in association with Prof Ludo Cuyvers from the University of Antwerp in Belgium.

Martin is a quantitative economist specialising in the field of Quantitative Executive Decision Support modelling, Economic Impact Analysis and Engineering Management Decision Support, in which he has extensive experience, especially related to International Trade and Energy Economics. He authored various papers on the topic of power (electrical) network reliability and international trade. He has been conducting economic impact assessments and other related South African macro-economic, sectoral, provincial and industrial impact studies and policy related analysis since 1994.

He started his non-academic career at the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) in the middle 1990s, after post-graduate studies and lecturing at the North-West University. At the IDC, he was a member of the team that supported the analytics underpinning the SA-EU Free Trade Agreement.

In his capacity as quantitative economist he has been part of the developments of most of the major industrial and policy developments in South Africa, including more recently the King Shaka/Dube Trade Port business case development, Bombella Gautrain bid, various studies for Eskom on potential alternative generation build options, electricity price increase implications for the Department of Public Enterprise and other related energy economic impact studies in the liquid fuels and energy transportation fields (Department of Energy and Transnet, Transnet Pipelines and Sasol).

More recently he was appointed by the South African Independent Power Producers (IPP) Programme Office as an independent advising economist on topics of economic strategy with specific focus on the development of the South African Gas Utilisation Master Plan (GUMP), localisation and economic developmental issues.

During 2015 he was appointed by the Director General of the South African Department of Trade and Industry (the dti) as member of the economic research advisory network (ERAN) comprising of representatives from the national and provincial economic development government departments, government entities, universities and research institutions.

Martin holds a master’s degree (Cum Laude) in computable general equilibrium (CGE) modelling and development economics and is busy with his PhD in International Trade at the NWU.