15 years after the current Gross Domestic Product figure was released, the Federal Government has announced that it will on Sunday release the country’s new GDP figures.
Addressing State House correspondents on Wednesday at the end of the weekly Federal Executive Council meeting presided over by Vice President Namadi Sambo, the Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku, disclosed that the plan was a result of hard work. He noted that the initiative will assist the government in carrying out proper planning for development purposes.
“We received today briefing by the Minister of Finance that after nearly 15 years, Nigeria is now ready to rebase its GDP after more than one year of hard work by the ministries of Finance and National Planning, the Chief Statistician of the Federation and international agencies like the IMF, AfDB and IDB.
“You will recall that the last time that Nigeria issued new statistics and the GDP figure was 15 years ago. And this is not supposed to be so as we are supposed to be doing this every five years. So, we hope that by Sunday, this new GDP figure will be released and the importance of this is that for the first time in 15 years, we will know scientifically what the new GDP figures are, the contributions of every sector to the economy, and we will be able to know the sectors that record the most progress and which ones are lagging behind.
“The importance of rebasing the GDP is to ensure that after every five years, every nation wants to know how much progress the GDP has made. What are the sectors’ contributions? What are the challenges they are facing? Which sectors are moving forward; which ones are lagging behind?
“Inappropriate understanding of the GDP and the details of how the sectors are performing will affect policies. When the figures are hopefully released on Sunday, we will then be able to analyse sector by sector, and that will improve our budgetary planning and national planning, and indicate which sectors need added attention.”
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