Rebased GDP data to capture illegal activities, modular refineries, says NBS

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) says modular refineries and illegal and hidden activities will be captured in rebased gross domestic product (GDP) data set to be unveiled by the end of January.

Other areas that will be covered are the Nigerian social insurance trust fund (NSITF), digital economic activities, pension funds administrators, domestic households as employers of labour, the national health insurance scheme (NHIS), and quarrying and other mining activities.

Moses Waniko, technical assistant to the statistician-general, spoke on Thursday during a sensitisation workshop on GDP and the consumer price index (CPI) rebasing.

The event was organised by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) in collaboration with the NBS in Lagos.

GDP rebasing is the recalculation of a country’s GDP using current prices and weights.

Speaking at the event, Waniko said 2019 was picked as the rebase year because “other sector-specific administrative data for this period were collected”.

He said the decision to rebase was driven by the “relative economic stability” in 2019 compared to other recent years, which were marked by significant shocks.

“Some major surveys that served as inputs into the rebasing covered this period. 2020, 2021 and 2022 were avoided as base years due to economic instabilities – this follows IMF guidelines,” Waniko said.

“We’re currently concluding the rebasing. We need to validate the results, and then we have to do a launch; we are looking at the end of January to do that launch, to disseminate the numbers, and then, usually, there are post-rebasing activities that will happen.”

‘ECONOMY SIZE WILL BE BIGGER AFTER REBASING GDP’

Waniko said the rebasing would have implications for the economy.

“It is good to look at the rebasing from different angles, not just the aggregate numbers, but to look at what those numbers are supposed to tell us, in terms of the distribution, the aggregate numbers, in terms of their weights, contributions and the rest,” he said.

“Beyond that, there are other implications for the national economy… The first is rebasing will provide or allow for an economic and development plan.

“The second is that the rebasing will really help to provide a good trajectory for the economy. So beyond this, it’s important to also state that after the rebasing, there are certain things that we expect that might change, such as changes in the size of the structure of the economy.

“We expect that the size of the economy will be bigger.

“The tax-to-GDP ratio is something that people may want to see what the numbers would look like. Debt to GDP ratio of 18.5 percent as of September 2019 could also reduce with the bigger size of the GDP, and then per-capita income will increase after the rebasing.”

‘ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES MAY INCLUDE SEX WORK, DRUG PEDDLING’

Speaking as a panellist at the event, Baba Madhu, an assistant director at the NBS, said commercial sex work and drug peddling are some illegal activities that may be covered in the new data.

“Illegal activities will mean, if you are into, for instance, drugs. There are some countries it is drugs that drives their economy and it’s illegal here because there’s no legal backing,” he said.

“Also prostitution. They also earn income. Some even live bigger than those that are in the formal sector… and it is real. But the challenge is legal backing and how do you get the data?”

In October 2024, Adeyemi Adeniran, statistician-general of the federation and chief executive officer (CEO) of NBS, announced plans to rebase the GDP and CPI to reflect current realities and account for structural changes in the economy.

Adeniran had said the last time the economy was rebased was in 2010 — more than 14 years ago.

He also said the rebasing would now be conducted every five years.