TheCable

Adekunle Oyinloye, the managing director of the infrastructure bank, has said Nigeria must rebase its gross domestic product (GDP) to cater to areas and sectors missing in the current GDP.

While speaking at the Lekki Gardens Investment Forum (LGIF) 2015, which held at the civic centre, Victoria Island, Lagos, the economic expert said Nigeria has a growing population and a growing economy that may not be explained totally by macroeconomic realities.

“In access bank that time, when GSM (Global System for mobile communications) was going to come [into Nigeria], there was this management meeting and we were having a debate whether people would be able to afford it at N50 per minute,” he said.

“Everybody thought it was impossible. That same pessimism was what Vodacom [used, and] asked somebody to come and conduct ability to pay, but they don’t know Nigeria very well; ability to pay cannot be explained by household income.

“The population is real; we have an expanding economy before and after the rebasing, and we are still going to do another rebasing because there are still yet-to-be-captured sectors in Nigeria. We have a middle class that is growing very fast.”

Oyinloye added that real estate has a big potential in Nigeria, which must be harnessed. He added that the real estate industry in Nigeria is responsible for just about 0.6% of the recently rebased GDP, believing it could be higher.

Frank Aigbogun, publisher and chief executive officer of Business Day newspaper, who also spoke at the forum, said if the sector was properly harnessed, it could generate about 40% of the Nigerian GDP while creating employment for a teeming population.

Richard Nyong, chief executive officer of Lekki gardens, said his venture had invested billions of naira into sector and hopes to do more in the years to come.

“In the next five to eight years, we are expecting to have done about a million houses,” he said.

Nigeria’s GDP was rebased April 2014, bringing the total GDP for 2013 to N80.3 trillion (£307.6bn: $509.9bn) – the largest economy in Africa, ahead of South Africa’s $370.3bn GDP.

Further rebasing of the GDP to add more sectors may move Nigeria from the 26th largest economy in the world to the 20 top economies in the world – a vision the country had set for 2020.

Other experts at the forum were Niyi Falade, managing director, Crusader Sterling pensions limited; Rilwan Belo-Osagie, MD, FSDH merchant bank; Kunle Oyinloye, managing director, The Infrastructure Bank; Abimbola Olashore, chairman, Lead capital group and Mayowa Ogunwemimo MD, FSDH Asset Management Limited.