Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) has faced brutal budget cuts over the past decade.
This remarkably short-sighted approach leaves it increasingly underfunded and understaffed. Yet complex modern societies can only be understood with the help of reasonably reliable data, so the resulting weaknesses in the national statistical system pose a serious and growing risk.
It’s like saving money on your car by spending less on engine oil. It looks easy and trivial until you have to replace the whole engine. The results can be seen in two vital areas: the population and GDP.
In line with international best practice, Stats SA publishes two estimates for the population: a census every decade and midyear population estimates based principally on administrative data, mostly birth and death registers.
For 2022 the latest midyear population estimates place the population at 61-million. That is 1-million fewer than the census, for a 3% discrepancy.
Problems with the population estimates can lead to less effective allocation of public spending to meet national and provincial needs. It also has important implications for virtually every aspect of economic analysis. If we use the census data, the GDP per person shrank about 7% from 2011 to 2022. If we rely on the midyear population estimates, it has essentially remained unchanged.
Other data is not immune. Since the early 2020s the GDP data has been disproportionately affected by improbable swings in agricultural value added. In seven of 15 quarters from March 2022 to September 2025, Stats SA reported that quarterly agricultural value added, seasonally adjusted, expanded or declined 10% or more.
In consequence, though farming only contributes about 3% of GDP, it has disproportionately affected quarterly growth rates. The scale of the reported changes in agriculture does not make economic sense, since the reported growth rates don’t align with anything else happening in the sector. Yet there’s no visible effort to deal with the problem.
The gradual loss of reliability in the national data has many causes, but one overarching factor stands out: the swingeing cuts to Stats SA’s budget over the past decade and the consequence of deepening understaffing. In the three fiscal years from March 2022 to March 2025, the average annual budget allocated to Stats SA was, in real terms, 23% lower than the average from 2015 to 2017.
Most of the decline occurred in branches charged with improving methodology and quality control — the South African National Statistics System, methodology and statistical support. These branches lost almost half of their funding in constant rand terms (deflated with the consumer price index). In the remaining branches, which collect and analyse data and conduct surveys, budgets shrank 16%. That is still a deep cut.
Shrinking budgets have translated into an extraordinary loss of capacity. In 2024/25 Stats SA had 700 vacancies but could only advertise seven due to budget constraints. Since 2016 the number of people it actually employs has shrunk 24%, or more than 600 positions.
Its establishment has fallen 8%, while its vacancy rate has more than doubled. In the mid-2010s, Stats SA reported a vacancy rate of around 10%. By the end of the decade the figure had risen to 18%. In 2025, it was 22%.
Again, the hardest-hit branches were in quality control and methodology. Together, the three units involved had a vacancy rate of 30% in 2025, compared to 20% in the rest of the agency.
The amounts saved by the slashing cuts to Stats SA are trivial compared to total public spending. In 2024/25 Stats SA’s entire budget came to R2.8bn, or just 0.1% of the national budget. Yet it is the agency that is most critical for sustaining the effectiveness of government spending as a whole.
Ultimately, the cost of a weaker statistical system will inevitably outweigh the relatively small savings. Moreover, by undermining the scope for evidence-based policymaking, weakening Stats SA threatens the rational discourse that is indispensable for democracy.
• Makgetla is a senior researcher with Trade & Industrial Policy Strategies.
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