Private sector borrowings are either for speculative money market purposes or for payment to foreign suppliers of imported goods.
Domestic banks are heavily involved in private sector borrowings.
These borrowings consistently exceed those of the government, in South Africa. Very few people seem to be concerned about our foreign debt nowadays. What is important to bear in mind is that the debt is measured in US dollars even though some of the loans were issued in other currencies. This means that over the years the rand's devaluation against the dollar and the dollar's decline against currencies such as the German Mark and Swiss Franc greatly increase the size of the original debt. The debt is currently just short of R90 billion.