Nigeria Ready To Rebase GDP To Boost Economic Growth

Nigeria is planning to Rebase
Growth Domestic
Product,Ministries of Finance and
National Planning.
The event, which will take place
on Sunday at the NICON Hilton
Hotel in Abuja.
“The importance is that, for the
first time in 15 years, we will
know, scientifically, what the GDP
figure is & what the contributions
of every sector are.
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Nigeria is looking to rebase its Growth Domestic
Product (GDP) to identify sectors that have been
left out in the nation’s GDP for 15 years.
Briefing reporters after the Federal Executive
Council meeting on Wednesday, the Minister of
Information, Labaran Maku, said the Minister of
Finance briefed the meeting about the planned GDP
rebase.
He told the reporters that the Ministries of Finance
and National Planning, the Chief Statistician to the
Federation and international agencies like IMF,
AFDB, IDB had understudied the sectors of the
Nigerian economy for more than one year.
The event, which will take place on Sunday at the
NICON Hilton Hotel in Abuja, will formally enable
Nigeria to know a few of the sectors that recorded
the most progress and which ones are lagging
behind.
“We are supposed to do this every five years.
Every country re-calibrates its own GPD statistics
and date to show the progress made or challenges
faced by the economy. The council was briefed
that Nigeria will formally release the new GDP
figures for the country on Sunday.
“The importance of this is that, for the first time in
15 years, we will know, scientifically, what the
GDP figure is and what the contributions of every
sector to the economy are. We will also be able to
know the sectors that have made the most
progress and which ones are lagging behind,” Mr
Maku said.
The meeting, which was chaired by the Vice
President, Mr Namadi Sambo, also discussed the
speculations of Ebola diseases outbreak in Nigeria
and the Minister of Information reassured
Nigerians that there were no cases of Ebola fever
in Nigeria.
He said that the Minister of State for Health, Dr
Khaliru Alhassan, had told the council that his
ministry, during the week, took time out to verify
the speculations and that his findings indicated that
Ebola fever was not in Nigeria.
At a news conference in Abuja on Monday, Dr
Alhassan, dismissed media report that there was
an outbreak of the disease, saying that laboratory
investigations revealed that it is not Ebola but
dengue fever.
He said: “Most Nigerians mistake Dengue fever,
which is also transmitted by mosquitoes in urban
and semi urban areas, for Ebola disease.
“Dengue Fever is caused by a virus usually
transmitted through a particular type of mosquito,
not the normal anopheles mosquito that we know
in Nigeria that transmits malaria.
“Its symptoms are very similar to that of malaria,
with fever, headache, body pains and associated
vomiting. It can easily be mistaken for malaria
where there is no high index of suspicion in the
first instance,” Dr Alhassan said.
He stressed that the government had taken a
proactive measure by putting all port and border
posts on high alert to screen travellers from
countries with confirmed Ebola cases.