Economic and financial analysts said the nation’s rebased GDP figure of $510bn did not make Nigerians richer in any way.
They said the new GDP figure was only good for the purpose of standardisation and served as a basis for comparing the nation’s economy with other countries’.
According to the Chief Executive Officer, Financial Derivatives Limited, Mr. Bismark Rewane, the GDP is an output measure and should not be misconstrued as a revenue measure in view of the way some analysts have been commenting on it.
He said there was really nothing much to be excited about because it had not in any way improved the live of the common man.
Rewane, however, noted that the rebased GDP figure would help foreign investors to better understand the size and components of the nation’s economy.
He said, “The new GDP figure had not increased the amount of money in people’s accounts; the prices of goods have not changed; the value of the currency has not changed; and there has not been more jobs.
“The new $510bn is far away from the $900bn target we have for our Vision 2020, which is just six years away.”
He said the new GDP figures would reduce the nation’s economic growth from the current average of seven per cent to about 4.5 per cent by the next quarter.
A professor of Economics at the Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago Iwoye, Ogun State, Sharafadeen Tella, said the new figure did not impact on the lives of the people directly.
He, however, said if the government could work on sectors lagging behind, it could help to improve the economy in the future.
Tella said the fact that Nigeria’s per capita income was still the 121st in the world meant that the country was far away from development.
The Chief Executive Officer, Cowry Asset Management Limited, Mr. Johnson Chukwu, pointed out that the rebased GDP figure would help to attract foreign direct investors into the country as they would see that the size of the economy had increased tremendously.
He, however, said the government needed to address infrastructure deficit to enable the country to grow at the rate it should.
Mr. Femi Ademola of the Research Intelligence Unit of BGL Plc said the new GDP figure had increased Nigeria’s per capita income from $1,500 in 2012 to $2,999.41, and this had classified the nation as a lower middle class income country.
“There is no direct impact on Nigerian individually, especially the man on the street. On the long run, however, the economic benefits of improved national statistics would be felt by everybody through increase in job creation, wages and working conditions, and in tax revenue from increased economic activities,” he said.
Source: Punch
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