Data from SARB show that investment has declined meaningfully since 2010 in most industries, and the capital stock in the manufacturing industry has actually shrunk.
It is worth pointing out that there are large differences between SARB and Statistics South Africa’s estimates of industry capital stock and investment. The Statistics South Africa data suggest that real capital expenditure has been a lot lower than the SARB data, while the capital stock has declined in other industries as well, such as business services and agriculture. Apart from the difference in how the data is deflated, it is likely that this reflects differences in assumed starting stocks of capital at the beginning of the data samples, as well possibly differences in the depreciation assumptions used by the data providers.
