The country’s Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, will now take into account illicit and covert activities including pr*stitution and drug sales. This is according to a statement released by the National Bureau of Statistics, or NBS.
NBS disclosed this at a sensitization workshop on GDP and Consumer Price Index, CPI Rebasing organised in collaboration with the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG).
NBS also suggested 2024 as the new base year for calculating inflation and 2019 as the new GDP base year.
According to the bureau, 2019 was proposed as the new GDP base year because economic activities were relatively stable during the year, compared to subsequent years disrupted by the impact of COVID and policy shifts
The bureau further stated that the rebased GDP is anticipated to include new sectors, including the digital economy, the operations of pension fund administrators, the Nigerian Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSTIF), the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), modular refineries, domestic households as employers of labor, and coverage of illicit and covert activities.
Dr. Baba Madu, Head of National Accounts at NBS, explained the inclusion of illicit and covert activities in the classification of economic activities for the purpose of calculating GDP.
He said,
Highlighting the importance of the GDP and CPI rebasing exercise, Statistician General, Prince Adeyemi Adeniran, said:
TimesNow.com.ng reported that after the country’s statistics agency closed its website due to a cyberattack, important data on the Nigerian economy is still unavailable, over three weeks later.
Key economic indicators for Africa’s largest oil producer are easily accessible online through the National Bureau of Statistics website.
On December 18, the agency shut down the website and cautioned users not to use any information found there until it was completely restored.
Source: TimesNow.com.ng
