By Abiola Olawale
Nigeria is set to re-base its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) later in the year, the Statistician-General of the Federation, Yemi Kale disclosed this on Thursday.
Kale made this announcement in Abuja during a media conference at the on-going National Survey of Establishment (NSE).
The nation’s Statistician-General while speaking on the importance of re-basing the GDP, said the aggregated data would provide information for policymakers on the activities driving the economy.
He also stated that the ongoing NSE, would provide an updated data on 17 broad economic activities and give a better reflection of the commercial structure and composition of the Nigerian economy.
According to Kale, the re-basing of the GDP cannot be successful without appropriate data from the business and commercial establishment accross the country.
He, however, stated that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has listed over 1.4 million business establishment in the National Business Sample Census(NBSC), which began in October 2020.
Enumerating the positives of rebasing the GDP and how the NBS intends to go about the strategy, Kale said: “It would also provide useful information for policymakers on the activities driving the Nigerian economy and those that require government intervention and serve as a benchmark for subsequent commercial and industrial sector statistics. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic when many businesses and commercial activities have been impacted severely, a survey such as this, with the information to emanate, is extremely invaluable to designing and planning for the post-COVID-19 long term growth and development of the private sector in Nigeria.
“The first component is the listing or enumeration of business and commercial establishments across the country, while the second part is the sample survey, which is currently going on. The data retrieved from the businesses during the listing exercise were the establishment’s contact details, nature of the business and ownership structure, number of employees, and GPS location. The sample survey which commenced with the training of field personnel two weeks ago, essentially, takes a sample of the enumerated business establishments under the listing exercise. NBS enumerators during this period will be visiting selected establishments across the 17 sectors in the country to canvass for information. Questionnaires will be deposited with these establishments and retrieved on a later date as agreed with the firms, or in some cases, completed on the spot where the relevant officers are available to be interviewed.
“This is also enshrined on our law, the Statistical Act 2007, which explicitly mandates us to only use information collected from respondents for the purpose for which it was collected, and further forbid us passing it on to a third party. Therefore, establishments should rest assured that their information is perfectly safe in our hands.”
