COUNTRY / INDICATOR
South Africa Government Expense
South Africa government expense: latest available value for 2022, historical series from 2016, ranking context and source documentation.
Series overview
GC.XPN.TOTL.GD.ZS| Year | Value | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 33,42 | -1,18 |
| 2021 | 34,61 | -3,23 |
| 2020 | 37,84 | 3,18 |
| 2019 | 34,65 | 0,66 |
| 2018 | 34,00 | 0,74 |
| 2017 | 33,25 | 1,06 |
| 2016 | 32,19 | — |
Source methodology
World Development IndicatorsIndicator note: Expense is a decrease in net worth resulting from a transaction. This indicator is expressed as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which is the total income earned through the production of goods and services in an economic territory during an accounting period.
Source organization: Government Finance Statistics Yearbook and data files, International Monetary Fund (IMF); World Development Indicators, World Bank (WB); National Accounts data files, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
Metadata fetched: 2026-08-01 01:31:09. Open original metadata response.
Country-specific interpretation
Automatically derived from the displayed seriesSouth Africa recorded 33,42 percent of GDP in 2022, the latest year available in this series.
Compared with 2021, the government expense decreased by 1,18.
Across the latest five-year comparison window, the series shows an upward direction.
Across 7 observations from 2016 to 2022, the average was 34,28; the minimum was 32,19 in 2016 and the maximum was 37,84 in 2020.
South Africa ranks 43 out of 151 countries with a current value in the portal ranking.
The latest value is above the available average for Sub-Saharan Africa.
It is also above the available average for the Upper middle income group.
Ongoing fiscal expenditure intensity.