Saw this article last year, but was looking for more information from the experts,

LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigeria plans to change the base year for its gross domestic product (GDP) to 2008 from 1990, a move that could lead to a "huge jump" in the estimated size of Africa's second biggest economy, the national statistics chief said on Thursday.

The measure scheduled for January will aim to better capture the current real economy, taking into account the growth of sectors like telecoms, Yemi Kale, head of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) told Reuters in a phone interview.

When Ghana made a similar move to recalculate its GDP last November, its estimated output shot up by 60 percent, catapulting it into the ranks of the middle income countries.

"When we do it next year ,  We expect a huge jump in GDP because we have been using the 1990's and the structure of the Nigerian economy has changed since then," Kale said.

"There have been a lot of changes in the Nigerian economy, for example, we now have a telecom sector which did not exist in the 90s," he added.

Most governments overhaul their GDP calculations every few years to reflect changes in output and consumption, such as the advent of mobile telephony and the Internet, but Nigeria has not done so since 1990.

The rebasing of Nigeria ’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), as is presently being contemplated, would likely make the country Sub Saharan Africa’s (SSA’s) biggest economy, by 2014, according to a new research report released yesterday to BusinessDay by Renaissance Capital (Rencap) analysts.

The report says that if Nigeria’s GDP is revised upwards by the same magnitude as Ghana’s was in 2010 (which is 60 percent) Nigeria’s economy could surpass the size of the sedately growing South African economy, as soon as 2014.

“However, if we are conservative and expect only a 20 percent upward adjustment, then Nigeria is likely to become Sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest economy by 2016,” the report noted.

Nigeria was in January 2012, expected to change the base year for its GDP calculations to 2008 from 1990, a move that could have led to a huge jump in the estimated size of Africa ‘s second biggest economy.

However, the release of the new GDP figures may have been delayed for a few weeks, as disclosed by Yemi Kale, Statistician- General of the National Bureau of Statistics (N.B.S) in a recent interview.

“Yes, we are still working on it. Unfortunately, there was a lot of work that should have been done during the period of the strike, so we have been set back by a couple of weeks. We are still hoping that we might be able to complete this before the end of the quarter. I was hoping to release this number by the last week in January.”

Most governments overhaul GDP calculations every few years, to reflect changes in output and consumption, such as mobile phones and Internet usage, but Nigeria has not done so since 1990, suggesting that the previous GDP framework, underestimated economic activity.

When Ghana rebased its GDP in 2010, the value of its economy shot up by over 60 per cent.

“A similar 60 per cent increase for Nigeria’s $222 billion economy, would bring it much closer to the continent’s top economy, South Africa, which is currently at $355billion,” says Samir Gadio, Emerging Markets Strategist at Standard Bank, while underlining the potential impact of the upward adjustment on the country’s growth outlook.

economist?

updates?

All this GDP nonsense that has no positive impact in the lives of Nigerians.