Despite similar economic metrics, South Africa faces significantly higher borrowing costs than the United States. This article explores the underlying factors influencing market perceptions and the implications for both economies.
Image: Karen Sandison / Independent Media
On paper, the United States (US) and South African (SA) economic metrics are not dissimilar, but markets view the two economies in two completely different lights.
As such, it is a lot more expensive for SA to borrow from international markets than it is for the US. This is an interesting discussion and reveals a lot about the psychology of markets.
In headline terms, the US inflation picture is remarkably similar to SA’s.
US Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation is running at 4.2%, while SA's came in at 4.0%, a gap of just 20 basis points.
Yet, sovereign borrowing costs tell a very different story – the US 10-year Treasury yield sits at 4.51%, while SA's equivalent stands at 8.63%, leaving a spread of 412 basis points between two economies posting near-identical inflation prints.
The disparity plainly reflects something more than inflation alone. The more pressing question is what, precisely, that gap is pricing in?
You might lean towards economic growth, but it is not that either. SA's annualised gross domestic product (GDP) growth is running at 1.9%, while the US is at 1.6%, even as it remains in the midst of the largest artificial intelligence (AI)-driven capital expenditure cycle in history, with hundreds of billions flowing into data centres and chip infrastructure.
SA, by contrast, is producing 1.9% growth despite structural economic constraints, no comparable technology tailwind and a coalition government that is still finding its footing. In that context, the SA number carries more weight than the headline alone would suggest.
The fiscal comparison reinforces the point.
The US federal deficit is tracking above 6% of GDP and projections show federal debt reaching 120% of GDP within the decade, under current policy settings. SA's fiscal position is hardly pristine, with debt-to-GDP still rising, yet on several measures it compares more favourably than is often assumed.
The South African Reserve Bank (Sarb) has maintained positive real interest rates, while the Federal Reserve (Fed) spent two years running at deeply negative real rates before reversing course.
On the metrics that central-bank credibility frameworks are meant to reward, SA’s record over the past five years is at the very least defensible, and yet SA remains sub-investment grade, while the US continues to borrow at 4.51% even after its last top-tier rating was removed in 2025. That US downgrade produced almost no market reaction and the market’s indifference to a downgrade may be the clearest indication of what the yield differential is really measuring.
The US 10-year yield is not merely a function of fiscal position or growth; it reflects the depth and liquidity of the world's largest sovereign bond market, the dollar's role as the global reserve currency and the structural demand for US paper that flows from that status through central-bank reserves, trade settlement and institutional mandates.
There is no comparable global bid for SA rand bonds.
The subsidy embedded in US borrowing costs is therefore not priced off near-term fundamentals so much as off economic or fiscal responsibility and in the medium term that advantage can be regarded as structural, regardless of what the US deficit does.
SA’s junk status is also doing work that sits apart from current fiscal metrics. Credit ratings absorb institutional history, political risk and execution credibility, not merely the condition of the present balance sheet. SA's downgrades were shaped by a decade of state capture, Eskom’s near collapse and broader governance deterioration.
The 2025/2026 numbers are better, but ratings agencies move slowly and institutional credibility, once lost, takes time to rebuild even when the data has improved.
Markets are similarly cautious, not because the current numbers are especially weak, but because they want a longer track record before repricing a risk premium accumulated over years of underperformance.
What this comparison ultimately reveals is that the sovereign-credit framework is not a level playing field. It rewards incumbency, reserve-currency status and institutional history in ways that are often only loosely connected to near-term fiscal or growth performance.
SA is paying 8.63% to borrow in its own currency while posting numbers that, in a developed-market context, would generally be regarded as adequate.
The US, meanwhile, is borrowing at 4.51% while running deficits that would invite concern from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in most other jurisdictions.
Markets are not blind to that inconsistency; US term premium (the extra compensation or risk premium investors demand to hold long-term US Treasury bonds) has been rising and demand at the long end (long-term bonds) has drawn scrutiny from the US Treasury's own advisory bodies.
Even so, dollar reserve status continues to place a structural floor beneath US borrowing demand in a way that fiscal deterioration alone does not easily dislodge.
For SA, the answer is not to replicate what the US has, because reserve-currency status is unavailable and ratings are, by nature, lagging indicators.
The route to a lower risk premium runs instead through sustained fiscal consolidation, continued monetary credibility at the SARB and enough consistency in growth and governance to alter the institutional risk assessment over time.
The data is already moving in the right direction; however, the yield differential is unlikely to compress meaningfully until the market is persuaded that the improvement is durable. That may seem unforgiving, but it is simply how sovereign-credit repricing works when the starting point is a decade of lost credibility.
MARKETS
US 10-year Treasury yields traded near 4.47% on Friday after dropping roughly 10 basis points, as optimism over a possible US-Iran agreement pushed oil prices lower and eased inflation worries.
Even so, US May producer inflation came in at 6.5% year-on-year, above forecasts and alongside firmer consumer inflation data, is keeping expectations of further US Fed rate increases this year in place.
United Kingdom (UK) 10-year gilt yields remain around 4.94%, close to their highest level since 21 May, as inflation concerns continued on the back of Middle East tensions.
Markets still expect at least a 25-basis point Bank of England (BoE) hike in September, with a reasonable chance of a further move before year-end.
SA’s 10-year bond yield declined from 8.74% last Monday to around 8.61% by last Thursday, supported by lower oil prices, a stronger rand and firmer risk sentiment.
While this points to a modest recovery in bond prices, caution remains due to geopolitical risks, stronger local GDP data and ongoing uncertainty around inflation and interest rates.
Even so, the yield is still roughly 18 basis points lower over the month.
Bianca Botes, Managing Director at Citadel Global.
Bianca Botes, Managing Director at Citadel Global.
Image: Supplied
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