Homepage > Countries > Lesotho


Lesotho

Updated: July 2026

Key Insights
The resources applied by the Basotho government to gather, compile, and publish national accounts data are inadequate to ensure fully independent, high-frequency, and comprehensive macroeconomic statistics, though moderately stronger than some lower-income peers.

The national statistical agency, the Bureau of Statistics (BOS), operates under several operational, financial, and structural constraints:
  • Geographical and Infrastructure Constraints: Lesotho's rugged, mountainous terrain (Maloti) presents significant logistical hurdles for field data collection. Physical access to remote highland communities is difficult and expensive, frequently leading to localized survey gaps and delays.
  • Informal Sector and Agricultural Reliance: A substantial portion of the population relies on subsistence farming, informal livestock grazing, and unrecorded micro-enterprises. Capturing these non-monetised and informal economic flows requires frequent, labour-intensive household and agricultural surveys that state budgets struggle to fund regularly.
  • Deep Integration with South Africa: Lesotho's economy is closely tied to South Africa through the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) and the Common Monetary Area (CMA). Trade flows, SACU revenue share dependencies, and worker remittances introduce complex foreign-data dependencies and cross-border accounting challenges.
  • Fiscal Shortfalls and Administrative Capacity: The BOS faces persistent budgetary limitations, hindering its ability to maintain up-to-date business registers, adopt modern digital collection systems, and retain specialised technical statisticians against competition from regional private and international employers.
  • Dependence on Foreign Technical Assistance: Benchmark national accounts exercises-such as periodic GDP rebasings, living standards measurement surveys, and census operations-depend heavily on foreign financial and technical backing from international partners, including the World Bank and the United Nations.
QUICK LINKS
Economics:   
GDP DATA QUALITY   /   GDP SIZE   /   GDP GROWTH   /   WEALTH   /   INEQUALITY   /   DEBT
Demographics:   
DATA QUALITY    /    POPULATION PROFILE

E.S.G.:   
ENVIRONMENTAL    /    SOCIAL    /    GOVERNANCE

 
ECONOMICS
DEMOGRAPHICS
E.S.G.
Demographics sections:    DATA QUALITY    /    POPULATION PROFILE

 
POPULATION DATA QUALITY

The Population Data Quality Rating is derived from three factors: a country's latest Census Year; its Capacity for producing statistical data; and its Registration of Births data. Read more...

The three components are weighted to form the Population Data Quality Index.


Population Data Quality Ratings
Index: 0 = Extremely poor quality, 100 = Good as it gets
Ranked by Data Quality Index
Filter:
All
Africa
Asia Pacific
Americas
Europe
More...
Country
 Rank
Order		 Population
Data Quality
(Index, 0-100)		 Population
Data Quality
(Rating, A-E)		 Census
Years
(Out-of-date)		 Statistical Resources
(Index, 0-100)		 Registration of Births
(% of total)




Senegal 104 49.1 D 2 67.0 78.7
Ghana 105 47.2 D 4 63.6 70.6
Tanzania 106 45.5 D 3 61.8 26.4
Indonesia 107 44.6 D 5 71.8 77.0
Burkina Faso 108 43.5 D 6 48.0 76.9
Vietnam 109 43.5 D 6 55.3 96.1
Benin 110 43.3 D 12 53.9 85.6
Cote d'Ivoire 111 43.3 D 4 57.0 71.7
Lesotho 112 42.9 E 9 53.1 44.5
Zambia 113 41.4 D 3 41.9 14.0
Nepal 114 41.3 E 4 49.3 77.2
Malawi 115 41.2 D 7 48.9 67.2
Pakistan 116 41.1 E 2 47.5 42.2
Gambia 117 40.4 E 12 54.1 59.0
Sierra Leone 118 40.2 D 3 41.2 90.4
Nicaragua 119 39.8 D 20 47.6 84.7
Namibia 120 39.5 D 14 48.5 78.1

Access full Population Data Quality Ratings table


Data Notes
Population Data Quality Index numbers shown on a scale of 0-100.
         0 = Poor, 100 = Excellent.

Rating definitions:
         A: As good as it gets
         B: Good
         C: Use with caution
         D: Poor
         E: Extremely poor quality

The index calculations and displayed data are derived from the most current and up-to-date source data available.
+
Related Data
+
Related Insights for Population Data Quality
 
 

 
POPULATION PROFILE

World Economics has collated key demographic data for Lesotho in the table below. The data covers Population size, average age and dependency ratios.


Population Profile
Ranked by Population Size: 2025
Filter:
All
Africa
Asia Pacific
Americas
Europe
More...
Country
 Population
Size
(Millions, 2025)		 Median
Age
(Years)		 Fertility
Rate
(2025)		 Age
Dependency
(Young)		 Age
Dependency
(Old)		 Age
Dependency
(Total)




Namibia 3.1 21.3 2.9% 60.6% 6.5% 67.2%
Armenia 2.9 36.6 1.5% 28.3% 23.0% 51.2%
Lithuania 2.8 42.3 1.0% 22.2% 33.1% 55.3%
Jamaica 2.8 32.8 1.1% 24.5% 12.3% 36.7%
Albania 2.7 37.3 1.1% 25.0% 28.0% 53.0%
Gambia 2.9 18.6 3.6% 68.0% 5.7% 73.8%
Gabon 2.6 21.5 3.3% 60.0% 7.0% 67.0%
Botswana 2.6 23.4 2.4% 49.6% 6.4% 56.0%
Lesotho 2.4 21.8 2.4% 53.8% 6.2% 60.1%
Guinea-Bissau 2.3 19.4 3.4% 64.3% 5.6% 69.9%
Slovenia 2.1 44.7 1.3% 22.6% 35.9% 58.5%
Latvia 1.8 43.6 1.1% 24.0% 36.3% 60.4%
North Macedonia 1.8 41.0 1.2% 25.1% 29.3% 54.4%
Bahrain 1.7 33.4 1.5% 23.4% 5.4% 28.8%
Trinidad and Tobago 1.5 37.7 1.3% 24.8% 19.5% 44.3%
Estonia 1.3 42.8 1.1% 23.7% 35.4% 59.1%
Cyprus 1.4 38.6 1.1% 23.4% 22.2% 45.6%


Access full Population table


Data Notes
Data sources:
Fertility rate data is from the United Nations Population Prospect Database, Actual data to 2024, Medium estimate used for 2024-2050.

The displayed data are derived from the most current and up-to-date source data available.
+
Related Data
+
Related Insights for Population Profiles
 



↑ TOP CONTINUE TO E.S.G. →