Mr. Semiu Adeniran, the Statistician-General and Chief Executive of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), revealed Tuesday that the organisation has completed the plan to rebase the nation’s GDP and CPI in November of this year.
The head of NBS gave assurances to data users and Nigerians yesterday during a stakeholders’ engagement in Abuja that the process will not reduce the accuracy of current estimates. He noted that the key would be the methodology used for the calculations.
He highlighted that the involvement was a component of a larger plan to guarantee that the techniques used in the exercise would be adapted to the particular circumstances of Nigeria.
He had this to say: “We have seen a lot of activities going on in the digital space. The essence of rebasing is to be able to capture that new trend in the way and manner in which we transact in Nigeria.
“Rebasing would also allow us to capture enough data for new sectors or new ministries established by this government,” he added.
He emphasised that the results of its Living Survey made the exercise vital. He disclosed: “The timeline for the rebasing, we are looking at the second week of November this year, all things being equal, so that government can be able to use it in its budget planning,” adding that Nigeria’s economy was last rebased in 2014.
In an interview with Arise News Channel yesterday that is available to BrandSpur national news stories, Dr. Ayo Anthony, Head of the Prices Statistics Division, provided additional details about the decision to rebase the two main economic indicators.
He stated: “When you talk of rebasing of the CPI or GDP, that does not mean the bureau’s figures are not reflecting true reality.
“Specifically, CPI rebasing is all about bringing the price reference period and the weight reference period closer to reality, closer to the current period.
“Now, in the process of doing this, you are comparing prices of items, for example, presently, with a more recent period.
“But before now, our price reference period was 2009. Ideally, rebasing ought to be done in five years.
“However, because of some constraints, the bureau has not been able to carry out this. Now, rebasing is a very huge project. It involves collecting data of household expenditure across all the 37 States of the federation,” he added.
Speaking further: “Not only that, after that is conducted, we need to conduct another survey of what we call rare items. Rare items, which we call durable goods, like cars, and refrigerators. You know, all these items I mentioned now, are not items that are being bought regularly.
“And the people in the lower strata don’t always buy these. So, they should be part of the items in our CPI baskets,” Dr. Anthony added.
