The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has announced that the details of Nigeria’s newly rebased Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will be launched by the end of January.
This was disclosed on Thursday during a sensitisation workshop on GDP and Consumer Price Index (CPI) rebasing, organised by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group and the NBS in Lagos.
The rebasing, which aims to reflect current economic realities and account for structural changes, will adopt 2019 as the new base year. The NBS had earlier announced in October its plans to update the GDP and CPI frameworks.
During his presentation, Moses Waniko, the technical assistant to the Statistician General, explained that the data gathering phase was nearing completion.
“We’re currently concluding the rebasing. We need to validate the results, and then we have to do a launch; we are looking at the end of January to do that launch, to disseminate the numbers, and then, usually, there are post-rebasing activities that will happen,” he said.
Waniko highlighted that the rebasing would have several implications for the economy.
“It is good to look at the rebasing from different angles, not just the aggregate numbers, but to look at what those numbers are supposed to tell us, in terms of the distribution, the aggregate numbers, in terms of their weights, contributions and the rest.
“Beyond that, there are other implications for the national economy, which we have tried to put in this slide. The first is rebasing will provide or allow for an Economic and Development Plan.
“The second is that the rebasing will really help to provide a good trajectory for the economy. So beyond this, it’s important to also state that after the rebasing, there are certain things that we expect that might change, such as changes in the size of the structure of the economy.
“We expect that the size of the economy will be bigger.
“The tax-to-GDP ratio is something that people may want to see what the numbers would look like. Debt-to-GDP ratio of 18.5 per cent as of September 2019 could also reduce with the bigger size of the GDP, and then per-capita income will increase after the rebasing,” Waniko added.
Nigeria’s current GDP figures are based on the 2010 base year.
