South Africa Government Debt (% of GDP)
Everything federal, provincial and local governments owe combined, compared with the size of the economy.
78.4%
Matches the latest releaseNot refreshed recently, awaiting the next release
Explore the full South Africa economy15 live indicators on one dashboard, from growth and prices to jobs, trade and public finances. Updated automatically from official sources.Government Debt (% of GDP)
2000 to 2025
Source: IMF World Economic Outlook (GGXWDG_NGDP) · general government, % of GDP, annual, actual years only.
South Africa Government Debt (% of GDP) in context
Worked out from the published series shown above.
In South Africa, the government debt rose by 2.5pp in 2025, from 76.0% in 2024.
That is the highest reading in a record that starts in 2000.
Over the past five years it has ranged from 68.8% in 2021 to 78.4% in 2025.
Its average since 2000 is 45.2%, and the latest reading is above that.
South Africa is 20th of 62 countries in our Government Debt to GDP by Country ranking.
How this series is defined
Everything you need to check the figure against the source.
- Source
- IMF
- Series
- World
- Frequency
- Annual
- Unit
- %
- Seasonal adjustment
- Not applicable, annual data
- Latest observation
- 2025
- Revision status
- Latest published estimate, subject to revision
Data refreshed 2026-10-28. Figures are the latest published observations and can be revised.
More South Africa indicators
Latest readings. Open any one for its full history.
Rankings
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