In a series of earlier posts, Lisa Martin showed that one of main reasons for the sustained ratcheting up of public debt has been lower-than-expected tax revenues and higher-than-expected government expenditure, particularly for compensation of employees, debt service costs, higher education and health care (see here, here and here).
Today’s post compares historical revenue and expenditure under/overshoots, comparing each budget year’s projection for the next fiscal year to outcomes from the historical data provided in the May 2025 Budget Review. Since 2020’s pandemic, unexpectedly high commodity prices helped to raise tax receipts compared to what the Treasury was expecting, but higher expenditure on grants, wages of public servants, debt service costs and healthcare more than offset strong revenue growth.
Codera is making it possible to automate sophisticated analysis of economic and financial data. Our EconData platform, for example, makes it easy to evaluate historic IMF, SARB and National Treasury forecast errors and data revisions.
