Our website has detected that you are using an outdated browser that will prevent you
from accessing
certain features. An upgrade is recommended to improve you browsing experience.
December 2021 – Note on the impact of the benchmark revisions and rebasing of South Africa’s national accounts statistics on income, saving, capital formation and capital stock statistics
Published Date:
2021-12-15
Last Modified Date:
2021-12-14, 11:40 PM
Category:
Quarterly Bulletins > Articles and Notes |
The revised income, savings, capital formation and capital stock statistics presented in this note follows the comprehensive benchmark revision and rebasing of South Africa’s national accounts statistics, jointly undertaken by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) and the South African Reserve Bank (SARB). These statistics were published by Stats SA on 25 August 2021 and were incorporated in the September 2021 edition of the Quarterly Bulletin. A supplement containing all the revised national accounts statistics as well as a discussion of the conceptual,
methodological, classification and source data changes will be published by the SARB on 22 February 2022.
The main highlight of the outcome of the revision relates to the 16.3% upward adjustment of nominal disposable income of households in 2015. This mainly reflected an increase of almost similar magnitude in the compensation of employees. The increase in the level of nominal disposable income consequently led to a decrease in ratio values when income is used as the denominator
in these calculations. Total gross saving as a percentage of gross domestic product was slightly lower in 2015, following the revisions due to the decrease in the gross saving ratio of the corporate sector, offsetting increases in both households and general government. The reduction in real capital stock in 2020 reflected the significant negative nominal net capital formation that occurred during the early period of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.