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In developing countries, the agricultural sector plays a much more important role in economic growth and development if compared the economies of developed countries which have more diversified economies. In South Africa, the agricultural sector?s contribution to the economy in terms of GDP, employment and exports has been diminishing over the last 20 years. Policy uncertainty, productivity and other factors are having a negative impact on the sustainable growth of the agricultural sector. The sector has the potential to assist the struggling economy towards higher growth rates and to provide employment opportunities to more people, especially low skilled workers. This research paper has the objective to analyse the importance of the agricultural sector by applying an econometric model. An Auto Regressive Dynamic (ARDL) econometric model was employed to determine the nature of the relationship between economic growth and independent variables from the agricultural sector including net exports, employment, value added contribution and the gross operating surplus from 1996 to 2018. The findings indicated that both a short-run and long-run relationships exist between the variables included in the study. The study presents new insights that could possibly aid in developing the agricultural sector in South Africa and thus enabling it to compete on a global scale and contribute significantly to the local economy.

AN ASSESSMENT OF THE IMPORTANCE OF THE AGRICULTURAL SECTOR ON ECONOMIC GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA