On 27 April 1994 South Africa cast aside centuries of discrimination and oppression to form a new society built on the foundation of freedom and democracy.  This marked the end of apartheid rule and an introduction of a new Constitutional order, wherein all South Africans work towards a united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous society.   read more »

FOREWORD Minister Trevor Manuel, the Minister in the Presidency: The National Planning Commission  We are in the home stretch, 2015 is just around the corner and this Millennium Development Goals report, the fifth in a series of reports since the adoption of the MDG‟s in 2000, is critical in understanding and knowing whether we are   read more »

The Statistician-General in the twenty first century paper presented in Ramallah, Palestine to commemorate the 20th  Anniversary of Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics 23-September-2013 I have been invited to discuss the topic on the role of, depending on the nomenclature in countries, the statistician-general, or the chief  statistician or the president or the chairperson of   read more »

Given the vast amount of information appearing in detailed financial statements of companies, it may be difficult to discern significant relationships and trends in the data. One way to address this challenge is to use accounting ratios, which provides substantial insights into the relationships between variables and can indicate certain trends. Accounting ratios are calculated   read more »

The Financial statistics of provincial government release reports that compensation of employees increased by R23 798 million from R193 669 million in 2010/2011 to R217 467 million in 2011/2012. This increase was mainly due to increased compensation payments by the KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and Eastern Cape provincial governments. Figure 1: Compensation of employees by province: 2011-2012 (Rm, at current prices)   read more »

“The information gap between the elite and illiterate must be closed”. This statement by Statistician-General, Mr Pali Lehohla beautifully sums up the reason for the launch of this multilingual terminology publication. The launch event took place on 20 September 2013 at the Protea Manor Hotel in Pretoria. Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) worked in collaboration   read more »

Do you know how many people live in your community? How many are unemployed? Do you know how many households in your area have access to safe water, electricity and refuse removal? While information at a national level can be interesting, what people really want is to know about the place where they live. To   read more »

Government and all businesses, from small to multinational, need the facts on the economy that this release provides. Aneen Jordaan reports The gross domestic product (GDP) of a country is one of the main indicators used to measure the performance of a country’s economy. The Macmillan dictionary defines economy as the system by which a   read more »

The mid-year population estimates are used to account for population change during the period between Censuses and usually takes place at the mid-year point. This is usually done annually, rather than over a period of time as is the case with census, which is conducted after every 5 or 10 years. This year’s mid-year population   read more »