Don't Miss

Rebasing: Economic growth declines to 5.49%

By BusinessNews Staff on July 13, 2014

The National Bureau of Statistics on Friday finally released the result of the rebased Gross Domestic Product stating that in real terms, the economy grew by 5.49 per cent in 2013.

The GDP, which was released after it had gone through final refinements, showed that in real terms, the economy growth had been revised downwards to 5.49 per cent from 7.41 per cent previously estimated.

It also revealed that the final GDP for 2011 and 2012 now stands at 5.31 per cent and 4.21 per cent as against the 5.09 per cent and 6.66 per cent earlier estimated when the rebasing was first carried out in April

While the NBS had estimated that the economy would grow by an average of 6.39 per cent between 2011 and 2013, the final figures released on Friday showed that in real terms, the economy grew by an average of five per cent.

No reason was given for the drop in the actual GDP.

The data, a copy of which we made available to our correspondent put the final nominal GDP for 2011, 2012 and 2014 at N62.98trn, N71.71trn and N80.09trn.

This is against the N63.25trn; N71.18trn and N80.22trn for 2011, 2012 and 2013, which were earlier released by the NBS in April this year.

The Statistician-General of the Federation, Dr. Yemi Kale, had while unveiling the figure in April said the results from the rebased estimates indicate that the nominal GDP for the country has now become larger than previously estimated.

The implication of this, he added, is that the country has now overtaken South Arica to become the largest in the continent of Africa and 26th globally.

The countries that are now ahead of Nigeria in terms of GDP size are United States, China, Japan, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Brazil, Russia, Italy, India, Canada, Australia and Spain.

Others are Mexico, Korea Republic, Indonesia, Turkey, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Belgium and Argentina.

On sectoral performance of the economy, the NBS boss said the results indicate that the structure of the Nigerian economy has changed significantly leading to a decline in the share of agricultural sector and a rise in the share of services in nominal GDP.

The implication of this, according to him is that the country now has a stronger diversification of the economy than earlier reported.

He also said the Wholesale and retail trade was the economic activity which had the most notable changes between the old and new GDP series.

This is attributable to the effort made by the NBS during the rebasing exercise to capture more of the informal sector.

Telecommunications and information services; motion pictures and sound recording; cement production; food, beverage and tobacco; construction and real estate sectors also witnessed significant changes.

[Punch]

headline