Nigeria’s actual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate for 2013 has been revised to 5.49 per cent at the conclusion of the rebasing exercise, down from the previous 7.41 per cent, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced yesterday.
The final GDP rebasing results by output for 2010 to 2013, released by the NBS yesterday, indicated that GDP growth for 2012 had been revised down to 4.21 per cent from a previous estimate of 6.5 per cent.
Nigeria overtook South Africa as Africa’s largest economy in April, after a rebasing calculation in April almost doubled its gross domestic product to more than $500 billion.
Most governments overhaul GDP calculations every few years to reflect changes in output, but Nigeria had not done so since 1990, so sectors such as e-commerce, mobile phones and the film industry (Nollywood), had to be factored in.
Despite the downward review, Nigeria’s growth rate is still way ahead of South Africa, whose GDP growth was 1.9 per cent in 2013 as it suffered badly from strikes at major mines.
In April, Nigeria moved up 11 steps to become the 26th largest economy globally, ahead of South Africa, following the initial of the GDP rebasing, which moved the base year of the GDP from 1990 to 2010.
The country’s GDP increased by 75.58 per cent from $258.55 billion before the rebasing, to $510 billion.
The new GDP places Nigeria ahead of countries like Austria with $394.7 billion; Venezuela with $381.26 billion as well as Columbia, Thailand, Denmark, Malaysia and Singapore, among others which has $369.6 billion, $$365.96 billion, $$314.88 billion, $274.7 billion and $269.86 billion respectively.
