The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has urged Nigerians to exercise cautious optimism on the latest Gross Domestic Growth (GDP) report and work in line with federal government’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) to ensure the country does not slip back into recession in the coming quarter.
Yemi Kale, the Statistician General of the Federation said this while fielding questions from news men on Wednesday soon after the NBS’s GDP report was released. Th report showed that the Nigerian economy expanded 0.55 percent to bid its farewells to the worst economic recession in many years.
”These reports assist us in planning and ensure investors and businesses make the right decisions in key sectors. It also shows how key sectors are doing to ensure government plans well and ensure through its policies it sustains the positive economic outlook and ensure more people witness the effects of the positive economic growth”Kale said.
The Statistician General explained that the NBS is an agency of government that has the independence to carry out survey and publish it’s findings based on international best practices.
“The fact that the NBS can boldly say, when the SG is up for renewal that the economy is in recession and inflation has gone up to 17 per cent, speaks a lot about the integrity of the NBS.
“So in terms of NBS doctoring numbers for politicians, I don’t think anyone can make that claim and NBS can never be political. We don’t do it,” he said.
On why Nigerians are not feeling the real impact of the positive economic growth rate on their lives, Kale attributed this to the structure of the economy which is still largely driven by oil.
He said, “Recession is not about the price of your goods, not whether unemployment is going up or down, not whether you have quality education, it’s purely your gross domestic product, your outputs of goods and services in the economy are going down and the GDP is an accumulation of 46 different economic activities in Nigeria and the overall number whether positive or negative will determine whether you are in recession or out of recession.
“Now within those 46 activities, some sectors will do very well and will be positive, some will do badly, some will do worse, and some will stay the same way they are.
“Depending on who you are in the society, what we publish is the aggregated total of everybody. So even in that same report, you will see that 21 sectors were negative and there are other sectors did well.”
