There really is nothing much to the rebasing/re-benchmarking exercise. That it has not been done in such a long period, hence making the updated figures sound so huge, says more about governance in Nigeria than anything else. And any serious Nigeria analyst or private sector player is not really surprised by the figures. The point… Read More »
Finally, something that I can agree with. If we want to fetishise numbers we should at least try to get them right. Morten Jerven at FP: Today, due to the uneven application of methods and poor availability of data, any ranking of countries by GDP is misleading. The basic problem is that many countries have… Read More »
I was looking through my computer earlier today and I discovered a review I wrote during my first weeks as a Masters in Development Studies student at Uppsala in Sweden. The first thing those guys did was to encourage us to question the whole idea of development by making us read Gilbert Rist’s The History… Read More »
John Lanchester in LRB: If European monetary policy is run according to German national interests, huge structural imbalances will accumulate. The Germans will then either have to pay to correct those imbalances, or agree that the euro should not be run primarily according to German national interests. If they are unwilling to do either of… Read More »
According to a report by Bain & Company, quoted in a Reuters article: Bain Partner Andrew Tymms said the continent’s financial services industry will continue to grow at a compound annual rate of 15 percent to 2020, outpacing gross domestic product growth. “Retail banking will grow faster than corporate banking … to make up 38… Read More »
Based on a thorough review of the professional research literature and a re-examination of key hypotheses, our answer is “yes”. That is from Channing Arndt, Sam Jones, and Finn Tarp, all of University of Copenhagen. They continue: Our study represents the most carefully developed empirical strategy employed in the aid-growth literature to date. The results… Read More »
Fund managers should consider African markets such as Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania rather than chasing crowded emerging market trades elsewhere, economist Nouriel Roubini said. “It (Africa) is risky because there is less liquidity and the governance is not ideal. But in comparison to 10 years ago when there was civil strife and unstable governments,… Read More »
From WSJ: Foreign consumer-goods companies including Coca-Cola Co., Nestlé SA and Unilever PLC have been in Africa for decades without much competition from local players. Now, home-grown companies are expanding aggressively across the continent, eager to accommodate a growing middle-class among the billion-person population. Examples? Among the most prominent of these consumer upstarts: African retailers… Read More »
1. Haiti Earthquake: Worldwide solidarity, a common humanity? 2. Paul Krugman writes, ‘Europe’s economic success should be obvious even without statistics’. Matt Welch responds. Megan MacArdle responds. Don’t forget to check out the comments. 3. Top 5 reasons why “Failed state” is a failed concept – Aid Watch 4. Is the Nigerian President a goner?… Read More »
From Vanguard: Nigeria’s excess crude account has dropped from $20 billion (N3.004 trillion) at the beginning of the year to $11.2 billion (N1.646trn) in June. This implies that in the last six months, the various tiers of government in the federation have shared a total of $9bn (N1.323tr) from that account. This use of the… Read More »