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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Briefing: for richer, for poorer: GDP revisions and Africa's statistical tragedy
Author:Jerven, MortenISNI
Year:2013
Periodical:African Affairs: The Journal of the Royal African Society (ISSN 1468-2621)
Volume:112
Issue:446
Pages:138-147
Language:English
Geographic terms:Subsaharan Africa
Ghana
Subjects:gross national product
statistics
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/23357151
Abstract:On 5 November 2010, Ghana Statistical Services announced a revision of the GDP estimates upwards by over 60 percent, suggesting that in previous GDP estimates economic activitities worth about 13 billion US dollars had been missed. After the revision, which had a factual grounding and was done according to the book, a range of new activities was accounted for. As a result Ghana was suddenly upgraded from a low-income to a lower-middle-income country. In the fall of 2011 Nigeria also announced a forthcoming upward revision of its GDP. This briefing traces how the development community reacted to the news of the upward revision and clarifies how Ghana became a lower-middle-income country overnight. The author explains how GDP is typically calculated from a 'base year' estimate that serves as a basis for future estimates. The IMF statistical division recommends a change of base year every five years, but many African statistical offices make estimations on a base year that is out of date, as was the case in Ghana, and in most statistical offices data are poorly available. The author concludes that, because of the poor statistical capacity of African countries, any ranking of countries according to GDP levels is misleading. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]
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