SA economy 5.3% bigger than thought after GDP rebasing

South Africa’s economy is 4.9% larger than previously estimated after the country’s statistics agency rebased the data series to update the way that it measures gross domestic product (GDP), and refined its estimates of unobserved economic activity including illegal mining.

Read:

GDP at current prices stood at R7 trillion ($421 billion) in 2022, compared with R6.7 trillion previously reported, data published by Statistics South Africa in the capital, Pretoria, on Thursday showed.

The statistics agency recalculated the value of GDP based on production patterns in 2022, with some sectors being assigned larger weights to better reflect the structure of the economy.

Though the expansion was broad-based across sectors, mining grew the most after the rebasing, lifting its contribution to the economy by 12.5%.

The statistics agency said this was primarily due to the inclusion and better coverage of illegal mining, which has proliferated in South Africa as the price of gold has soared.

Read:

The second-largest sector weighting expansion was in finance, real estate and business services, which increased by 9.1%.

The contribution of the unobserved economy, which includes some parts of the informal economy and includes illicit and illegal activities, increased to 8.7%, from 7.3% previously.

© 2026 Bloomberg