Rebasing made Kenya look richer... but only on paper

Kenya recently rebased its economy. As a result, the estimated gross domestic product (GDP), which is the measure of the country’s economy for 2013, was 25 per cent larger than previously estimated. In a layman’s language, rebasing is recalculating the GDP.

Kenya’s GDP per capita — a measure of the total output of a country (GDP divided by the number of people in the country), is now $1,269, (Sh115,479). This has propelled Kenya to the superior category of ‘lower middle income’. The ‘lower middle income’ status is a World Bank grouping of 53 countries whose average income lies between $1,036 and $4,085 (GDP per capita).