From this mark, the government forecasts a gradual decline in its debt, aiming for 76.6% of GDP by 2029\/2030.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Following the mini-budget, South Africa’s debt-to-GDP ratio was revised lower<\/a> due to revisions to historical GDP calculations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These revisions by Stats SA placed the peak government debt closer to 74.6%, according to the National Treasury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe debt-to-GDP ratio peaked at 74.6% in 2025-26, down from the 78.4% estimated in the 2026 Medium Term Budget Policy Statement,\u201d the Treasury said in a statement at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The change was due to the size of South Africa’s economy being revised upwards to an estimated R8 trillion last year, up from the previous estimate of roughly R7.6 trillion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The GDP revision led to improvements in several economic indicators, which pointed to a strong fiscal performance for South Africa, according to Treasury Director-General Duncan Pieterse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur updated calculations confirm that government continues to achieve its fiscal targets, with the fiscal metrics looking even better than we had projected,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In comparison, the UK’s debt-to-GDP ratio was 93.2% at the end of the 2026 financial year and was forecast to rise to 97.3% by the end of 2028\/2029, according to the country’s Office for Budget Responsibility<\/a> (OBR).<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The OBR forecasts that government debt will increase to 97.3% at the end of 2028\/29. It will then fall to around 95.6% of GDP at the end of 2031\/32,” the group said in a research briefing on 29 October 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite its higher debt-to-GDP ratio, yields on UK government bonds are still significantly lower than those on South Africa’s government bonds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For South Africa’s benchmark 2035 government bond, the yield was 8.365% on 10 November 2026, according to Reuters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In comparison, the British financial company Hargreaves Lansdown reported a yield of 5.2% on UK 2035 government bonds on 11 November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A higher government bond yield reflects less trust in the country’s ability to repay its debts, which is determined by the debt-to-GDP ratio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, this ratio is not the only indicator which affects bond yields, with a country’s investment rating playing an integral role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Currently, the UK is considered investment grade by all three major ratings agencies: Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s (S&P), and Fitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the other hand, South Africa is rated as “junk status” by the three groups, although the country’s economy has been given a positive outlook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This credit rating warns investors that South African bonds carry a higher degree of risk, prompting them to demand higher returns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2020, shortly after Moody’s downgraded South Africa’s rating, Investec provided an overview of how the country ended up in its situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It broadly attributed the downgrades to “slow economic growth and a weak GDP, political instability, turmoil in the mining sector and an overburdened Eskom.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Currently, several economists forecast that South Africa is on the path towards regaining investment-grade status, particularly due to its current control over government debt levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The UK has maintained favourable credit ratings despite its higher debt-to-GDP ratio, owing to several factors, including its strong financial institutions and historical fiscal discipline, according to Jari Stehn, chief European economist at Goldman Sachs Research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The UK has strong fiscal institutions\u2014in particular, the OBR scores very well compared to fiscal institutions in other countries,” he said in October 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It\u2019s very independent, it has an important role to play, and there’s a lot of evidence that fiscal institutions like this help to achieve better fiscal outcomes.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" South Africa has a lower debt-to-GDP ratio than the UK, one of the world’s most developed economies, yet its bond yields are still significantly higher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":874557,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"posted","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"2120520431824228857","_sma_facebook_post_id":"191437357620492_2269500037203728","_sma_instagram_post_id":"18103690742640175","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[1999,27095,1498,3796,27096],"class_list":["post-883785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","tag-goldman-sachs","tag-hargreaves-lansdown","tag-investec","tag-national-treasury","tag-obr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=883785"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":883858,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883785\/revisions\/883858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}UK still on top<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/British-pound-UK-1024x576.jpg\")
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