Dar GDP to increase after rebasing

Dar es Salaam; Tanzania: Tanzania will update the base year it uses to calculate economic output to 2007 from 2001, the statistics office said, in a move that is expected to produce a higher estimate for gross domestic product. Tanzania follows in the footsteps of Kenya and Nigeria, which this year overtook South Africa to become the continent’s largest economy when it updated its base year to 2010 from 1990.

The rebasing process allows statisticians to update their estimates to take account of technological innovations, giving investors a clearer view of the amount and types of activity in the economy. The state-run National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said it would release the new data on October 31.

Tanzania’s GDP was $33.26 billion in 2013, a government minister said in June. Economists said the rebasing was expected to increase the size of the economy, which has been buoyed by big offshore natural gas discoveries.

“Tanzania’s economy has been growing rapidly from 2010 onwards, so the rebasing process will likely increase the size of the GDP,” Humphrey Moshi, professor of economics at the University of Dar es Salaam, told Reuters.

Kenya, East Africa’s biggest economy, saw its GDP revised up by 25 per cent to $53.4 billion in 2013 after the rebasing, up from $42.6 billion previously.