Zambia Government Spending

Indicator note: Final consumption expenditure is expenditure on goods and services by resident institutional units for the direct satisfaction of human needs or wants, whether individual or collective. General government FCE includes all government current expenditures for purchases of goods and services (including compensation of employees), and most expenditures on national defense and security, but excludes government military expenditures that are part of government capital formation. 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: Country official statistics, National Statistical Offices (NSOs); National Accounts data files, Central Banks; Staff estimates, World Bank (WB)

Metadata fetched: 2026-09-27 05:38:53. Open original metadata response.

Source revisions are retained before the current observation is replaced. This table documents the previous and replacement value for reproducibility.

Zambia recorded 12,68 percent of GDP in 2024, the latest year available in this series.

Compared with 2023, the government spending decreased by 0,63.

Across the latest five-year comparison window, the series shows an downward direction.

Across 9 observations from 2016 to 2024, the average was 14,09; the minimum was 11,53 in 2021 and the maximum was 17,68 in 2019.

Zambia ranks 135 out of 188 countries with a current value in the portal ranking.

The latest value is below the available average for Sub-Saharan Africa.

It is also below the available average for the Lower middle income group.

Public-sector demand and expenditure footprint.