Statistics South Africa said on Thursday that its rebased and benchmarked estimates put the economy at R8,044 billion in 2025 at current prices, 5.3% above the earlier estimate of R7,642 billion.

In the new 2022 base year, Stats SA said, the economy is 4.9% larger than previously estimated. The revision changes the denominator of ratios such as debt to GDP; it does not change how much government borrowed or spent.

What changed

Stats SA moved the reference year for constant-price national accounts from 2015 to 2022. It also introduced improvements in data, classifications and methodologies, a process it calls benchmarking. Stats SA said rebasing and benchmarking happen every five years and the last was released in 2021.

On that cycle 2020 would have been the new base year. Stats SA said 2020 was not a normal year because of Covid-19, so it chose 2022 as a relatively stable one. Statistician-General Risenga Maluleke said at the briefing in Tshwane that national accounts rules require a benchmark year to be an economically normal year.

Where the extra output came from

Stats SA said the 2022 level rose by R324 billion. Finance contributed R127 billion, mainly because of a change in how owner-occupied rent is measured, while trade and mining contributed R61 billion each. Household consumption was revised up the most, Stats SA said, using the Income and Expenditure Survey, owner-occupied rent and the non-observed economy.

Stats SA put the non-observed economy at 8.7% of value added in 2022, or R551 billion, and said new additions include illegal mining, e-hailing and illegal gambling. Figures reported from the briefing show mining revised up 12.5% and finance, real estate and business services up 9.1%.

What it means for debt

Johann Els, chief economist at PSG Financial Services, said government's debt ratio falls because the denominator is bigger. He calculated the ratio at 74%, down from 78.2%. That is his own calculation, not a Stats SA or National Treasury figure.

Els said the level of debt and the interest bill are unchanged. "We still need to redouble our efforts to get the economy going to get the debt down more substantially," he said. We have not seen a recalculated ratio from National Treasury.