South Africa’s non-financial companies (NFCs) held a record R1.8 trillion in their bank accounts in July 2025.

This trend began after the pandemic hit in 2020 and companies boosted their deposits by R166.9 billion.

In 2024, they added another R186.1 billion ‒ the biggest annual increase yet. Some of this growth was due to inflation, but much of it signalled cautious spending amid low economic growth.

So are companies holding excessive amounts of cash?

When the economy came to a standstill during the pandemic, companies protected their balance sheets amid higher uncertainty.

Cash holding thus increased significantly during the pandemic and the subsequent high-inflation period, and again when economic growth moderated from 2023 amid increased global and domestic uncertainty.

Investment picked up in 2021, briefly pushing nominal gross domestic product (GDP) growth higher than deposit growth.

But since mid-2022, deposit growth has outpaced GDP growth, a sign that businesses are still keeping extra cash as a safety measure amid heightened uncertainty and limited investment opportunities in the low growth environment.

From late 2023, the gap between deposits and investment widened due to heightened uncertainity, subdued business confidence and South Africa’s low economic growth.

^{Erratum: The legend on this graph was previously mislabelled, giving the impression that public NFCs held more deposits than private NFCs. This error has been fixed.}

The continued rise in deposits shows that companies are not merely stockpiling cash.

They are responding to economic conditions and balancing risk with readiness to invest when confidence returns.