South Africa’s economy is R300 billion bigger than first thought

South Africa’s economy is 4.9% larger than previously estimated after the country’s statistics agency rebased the data series to update how it measures gross domestic product and refined its estimates of unobserved economic activity, including illegal mining.

GDP at current prices stood at R7 trillion ($421 billion) in 2022, compared with the previously reported R6.7 trillion, data published by Statistics South Africa in the capital, Pretoria, on Thursday showed.

The statistics agency recalculated GDP based on 2022 production patterns, assigning larger weights to some sectors to better reflect the economy’s structure.

Though the expansion was broad-based across sectors, mining grew the most after the rebasing, lifting its contribution to the economy by 12.5%.

The statistics agency said this was primarily due to the inclusion and better coverage of illegal mining, which has proliferated in South Africa as the price of gold has soared.

The second-largest sector weighting expansion was in finance, real estate and business services, which increased by 9.1%.

The contribution of the unobserved economy, which includes parts of the informal economy and illicit and illegal activities, increased to 8.7% from 7.3% previously.