Nigeria’s last GDP rebasing was done in 1990
Barely days after being listed by the World Bank as one of five countries with the highest number of extremely poor people, Nigeria has declared a Gross Domestic Product, GDP, of N80.3 trillion ($509.9bn), pushing ahead of South Africa as the continent’s biggest economy.
The new figure was announced Sunday by the National Bureau of Statistics after a rebasing that nearly doubled Nigeria’s GDP from N42.3 trillion.
The new GDP compares with South Africa’s GDP of N60.7 trillion ($370.3bn) at the end of 2013.
The GDP index is the total value of a country’s goods and services over a period of time.
Rebasing is carried out to give the most up-to-date picture of an economy as possible. Many countries rebase their GDPs after every few year but Nigeria’s was last computed in 1990 when there was limited growth in most economic sectors.
The new calculation, released by the statistics bureau, now includes previously uncounted industries like telecoms, information technology, music, online sales, airlines, and film production.
The new figure shrank Nigeria’s debt-to-GDP ratio to 11 percent for 2013, against 19 percent in 2012, the Statistician-General, Yemi Kale, said on Sunday.
But many Nigerians and economists believe such numbers do not bring any change to a country with about 70 percent of its population in extreme poverty.
“GDP rebasing is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end. The end being the economic wellbeing of the average Nigerian. With the rebased GDP, our Per Capita Income is now $2,668 and the 121st in the world,” said Egheomhanre Eyieyien, a chartered accountant and a business consultant.
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