After a long hiatus, Stats SA has resumed the publication of insolvency data for the South African economy. The Statistics of insolvencies release provides data on the number of insolvencies, broken down by province. The first monthly release, published on 21 July 2026, reports on insolvencies for June 2026 and includes a time series from January 2023.   read more »

Municipal debt figures can be sliced and diced in several ways. The debt-to-income ratio is one of several indicators used to gauge the financial health of municipalities. A breakdown of municipal liabilities In non-financial circles, the word debt is often associated broadly with liabilities, which is any financial obligation that must be paid. This can   read more »

As government introduces new legislation to further support small, medium and micro-sized enterprises (SMMEs), recently released data from the 2019 Annual Financial Statistics (AFS) survey shows the growing role that small businesses play in the formal business sector. The National Small Enterprise Amendment Bill 2020, gazetted recently, outlines the establishment of an ombud service that   read more »

Note: The original version of this article was published on 25 June 2019, with the international tax-to-GDP ratio figures based on data from the IMF. After discussions with National Treasury, it was agreed that tax-to-GDP figures from the OECD provide a more relevant picture when South Africa is compared with other countries, as the IMF   read more »

Annual food inflation continues to slow despite April’s rise in value added tax (VAT). In fact, some food items are actually cheaper than they were a year ago. The items you are now paying less for are in the oil, bread, fruit and sugar categories, according to the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) release.1 Bread   read more »

  Media Release                                                                                                        22 August 2017 Poverty Trends in South Africa: An examination of absolute poverty between 2006 & 2015 The proportion of the population living in poverty declined from 66,6% (31,6 million persons) in 2006 to 53,2% (27,3 million) in 2011, but increased to   read more »

Media Release                                                                                                                                                          31 May 2017 Non-financial census of municipalities, 2016  The results of the latest Non-financial census of municipalities (NFCM) released   read more »

Despite rising interest rates and worsening economic conditions, South Africans seem to be coping with their debt. Data from the South African Reserve Bank and Stats SA’s Statistics of civil cases for debt release indicates some resilience on the part of South African debtors. The South African Reserve Bank hiked the repo rate twice in   read more »

Data from Stats SA’s Annual financial statistics (AFS) report shows that the debt-to-equity ratio for the private sector as a whole has dropped since 2005. The debt-to-equity ratio is a measure of how much debt a company or industry has incurred to finance its operations relative to equity. Debt refers to how much an industry   read more »