current living conditions of Nigerians<\/a>, rather than rebased figures, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) contests this assertion.\n <\/p>\n\n The NBS maintains that rebasing is conventionally undertaken every five years to ensure the Consumer Price Index (CPI) basket accurately reflects the inclusion and exclusion of specific goods and services.\n <\/p>\n
\n Conveniently, the inflation rate had not undergone rebasing since 2009 until the current administration initiated the exercise in 2024.\n <\/p>\n
2024 rebasing of the Nigerian CPI<\/p>\n
\n This decline immediately sparked conversations online as it came against the backdrop of an economy where prices for essential goods and services had, in fact, increased across the country, and across sectors, given the festive season.\n <\/p>\n
\n This led many to outrightly reject the NBS\u2019s data and flag it as malpractice, especially considering that rebasing is methodological, not a real drop in prices.\n <\/p>\n
Current inflation conversations<\/p>\n
\n However, the NBS argues that the modification is not intended to misrepresent the country\u2019s economic reality but to amend what it refers to as an \u2018artificial spike\u2019.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cTransparency requires that we provide a clear picture of actual price changes rather than simply reporting an artificial spike that does not reflect economic realities.\n <\/p>\n
\n This is why we convened this meeting to inform our critical stakeholders and users of our data,\u201d the CEO of the NBS stated.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe last CPI rebasing was done in 2009, and ideally this exercise should be carried out every five years,\u201d the Director of Price Statistics at the NBS, Dr Ayo Anthony, stated.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cBecause of this 15-year gap, consumption patterns changed significantly, leading to the introduction of over 400 new products into the CPI basket and the removal of more than 200 items.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n To further elaborate, the director noted that the NBS would be using a 3 to 12-month average to reevaluate the country\u2019s inflation figures.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cTo address this, NBS will apply a normalisation process, as provided for in the CPI Manual 2020 (Chapter 9, Section 9.125), referred to as maximisation of the index reference period.\n <\/p>\n
\n Where a single-month reference period proves unsuitable, the manual recommends using a three-month or 12-month average.\n <\/p>\n
\n Accordingly, instead of December 2024 equalling 100, the average CPI from January to December 2024 will equal 100.\n <\/p>\n
\n This adjustment removes the artificial base effect and presents a more accurate picture of inflation dynamics.\n <\/p>\n
\n While this adjustment affects published figures for January to December 2025, the impact is not significant and will be clearly communicated to stakeholders,\u201d he explained.\n <\/p>\n
\n The director noted that this process would likely affect the inflation figures that had been presented from January 2025 to December of the same year.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This contention arises from current projections, which suggest the highly unusual scenario of December’s headline inflation more than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-367789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}