EconData makes it easy to evaluate historic SARB and National Treasury forecast errors and data revisions. Today’s post by Jan Hendrik Pretorius summarises historical IMF forecast errors of SA’s government debt-to-GDP ratio, plotting current year and each of the 5 year-ahead forecasts against the latest available (2025) estimates. Like the National Treasury, the IMF tended to under-estimate the medium-term debt profile over the last decade. The COVID-19 pandemic was responsible for large forecast errors in the long-term projections for 2020, while an upward revision to GDP contributed to under-estimation of the ratio between 2021 and 2023.
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Footnote
For each vintage, the estimate for a given year is compared with the 2025-vintage estimate for the same year.
Forecast error (percentage points) = vintage − 2025: positive = over-estimation; negative = under-estimation.
Horizon labels: T = that year; T+1 = next year; etc. Example (2017 vintage)
T = estimate for 2017 (2017 vintage) − estimate for 2017 (2025 vintage)
T+1 = estimate for 2018 (2017 vintage) − estimate for 2018 (2025 vintage)
T+2 = estimate for 2019 (2017 vintage) − estimate for 2019 (2025 vintage)
