Measured on the expenditure side, the South African economy grew 1.4% in 2025 after a 0.4% gain in 2024. This measure is what most economists, including the National Treasury, use when making their forecasts.
If measured from the production side, growth in 2025 was only 1.1% as the balance subtracted 0.2 percentage points from the growth rate. The increase in 2024 was 0.5%.
The nominal economy is projected to grow by 4.6% to R7.68 trillion in 2025. This was slightly higher than the national treasury forecast of R7.642 trillion given on 25 February 2026.
benchmark revision
Statistics South Africa It warned that in line with international best practice, in collaboration with the South African Reserve Bank, it is in the process of changing the base year for national accounts projections to 2022 and incorporating periodic datasets. Rebased and benchmarked estimates are expected to be published later in 2026.
fourth quarter 2025 details
limits of growth forecast Was up 0.1% quarter-on-quarter to 0.6% quarter-on-quarter. The first estimate was 0.4% quarter-on-quarter from the output measure and 0.3% quarter-on-quarter from the expenditure measure.
Five industries recorded positive growth between the third and fourth quarters of 2025. The finance industry was the largest positive contributor, growing by 1.4% and contributing 0.3 percentage points to positive GDP growth.
Additionally, the trade industry grew by 0.9%, which contributed 0.1 percentage point, while the personal services industry grew by 0.4%, which also contributed 0.1 percentage point.
The manufacturing industry was the largest negative contributor, declining 0.6% and contributing -0.1 percentage point. Four other sectors also declined in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter, but their contribution was minimal. They were mining, power, construction and transportation sectors.
Equally, there were three negative contributors to the expenditure measure, namely changes in inventories, exports and imports. Changes in inventories reduced growth by 0.5 percentage points, while a 0.6% decline in exports and a 0.5% increase in imports contributed -0.3 percent to net exports.
In line with this, the biggest contributor was household final consumption expenditure, which increased by 1.2%, contributing 0.8 per cent to growth. Government final consumption expenditure increased by 0.5%, contributing 0.1 percentage point.
Gross fixed capital formation increased by 1.3%, contributing 0.2 percentage points. This was the second consecutive quarter when this category grew.
pace of development
The pace of growth slowed as the year-on-year growth rate declined from 2.0% in the third quarter to 1.6% in the fourth quarter.
Growth had accelerated to minus 0.3%, 0.7% year-on-year in second quarter 2024. 0.7% and 1.4% in the next quarters.