GBoS Releases Rebased GDP and CPI

Gambia Bureau of Statistics (GBoS) has released Gambia’s rebasing of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the Consumer Price Index (CPI) during a press briefing last week.

The objective of the press briefing is to inform the public about the improvement registered in the CPI, which is one of the core mandates of the prices and government finance statistics unit under GBoS economic statistics division.

Nyakasi BM Sanyang, GBoS Statistician General said during the past three years, the Bureau’s economic statistics directorate has worked closely with the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and UNDP to rebase the country’s GDP using the production and expenditure approaches.

‘’It is evident in all aspects of our socioeconomic and environmental life that the availability of comprehensive, timely and accurate statistical information is crucial for effective national development, policymaking as well as for poverty assessment and monitoring processes,’’ he said.

Mr. Sanyang said good statistics are the foundation upon which scarce resources are allocated to fundamental needs such as health, housing and education and the provision of these statistics is based on the fundamental principles and international best practices that include the regular rebasing of both the GDP and price indices.

“We are also glad to inform the date users that for the first time GBoS will be calculating CPI indices for urban and rural areas and the historical inflation rates are unaffected by this rescaling,” he said.

He added that from January 2019 to January 2020, food and non-alcoholic beverages, bread and cereals increased by 13.1%, oils and fats increased by 10.7%, fish increased by 10.4%, meat increased by 9.2%, vegetables, root crops and tubers increased by 7.5% and milk, cheese and Eggs increased by 5.6%.

“From the total final consumption to household final consumption expenditure which were derived independently for the first time, recorded the largest share of 84.9% followed by the final consumption of general government with 8.4% and final consumption of Non-Profit Institution Serving Households (NPISH) with 2.0%

Samba Barrow, a GBoS statistician said since 2004, they have been using an old base, saying it is internationally recommended that the base should be renewed every five years but due to some challenges, the Bureau could not rebase.