GDP rebasing will attract investors to Nigeria – World Bank chief economist

Mr Francisco Ferreira, World Bank Chief Economist, African region, said the rebasing of Nigerian economy would attract more investors into the country.

Ferrira made the remark in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Washington on the sideline of the Spring Meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

It would be recalled that the rebasing of Nigeria’s nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) placed it at 509.9 billion dollars in 2013 from initial 285.56 billion dollars.

The rebasing then placed the country as the biggest economy in Africa, ahead of South Africa.

The World Bank chief economist then said “Nigeria’s GDP, which placed the country as Africa’s largest economy, has exposed its investment potential to the world.’’

He added that the rebasing had exposed sectors where Nigeria’s economy recorded dynamic growth, stressing that such areas would attract more investment inflows.

He noted that apart from attracting investors, the rebasing would also expose those areas of the economy that had not witnessed astronomical growth.

Ferreira called for aggressive regional integration drive to drastically reduce cost among African countries.

He said that “a situation whereby different countries in the region pursue immigration and trade policies that hinder trade and movement is expensive and wasteful.’’

Earlier in his presentation on “Sustaining Growth in Africa: State of the Africa Nation’’, the World Bank official said Africa had recorded about 20 years of resilient growth with per capita rates hovering around 2.4 per cent in the last decade.

According to him, growth is investment-driven rather than consumption everywhere on the continent.

He noted that fast-growing non-resource rich economies generally have solid balance of payment profiles, pointing out however, that there was no room for complacency.

He added that growth was uneven across countries, adding that what he described as “growth spurt” was not recorded in 22 countries over the 1995-2012 period.

“Among the 22 fast growers are oil producing countries, including Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Sudan and Chad, while non-oil resource nations in the fast growers scale are Liberia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Botswana, Ghana, Namibia, Sierra Leone and Zambia.

“In the category of non-resource rich fast growers are Mauritius, Cape Verde, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Malawi, Rwanda, Lesotho, Ethiopia and Central African Republic.’’ (NAN)