In a groundbreaking achievement for Nigeria’s economic data landscape, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has successfully completed the pilot phase of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) digitisation project.
The initiative, generously supported by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), marks a trans-formative milestone in the country’s pursuit of accurate and timely price statistics.
Prince Adeyemi Adeniran, the Statistician General of the Federation and Chief Executive Officer of NBS, expressed great pride and enthusiasm during his keynote address at the closing ceremony of the pilot phase. He commended the hard work and commitment of the NBS and UNECA staff involved in the digitisation process.
The CPI is a vital economic indicator that serves as a guiding compass for Nigeria’s economic policies. It influences decisions that impact businesses, consumers, and the overall well-being of society. Accurate and comprehensive price data is essential, especially in a global landscape of economic uncertainties.
The digitisation of the CPI data collection introduces a new era of quality refinement and aligns perfectly with NBS’s agenda to enhance technical operations through modern methods and techniques. By automating the data collection process, potential errors and inconsistencies inherent in the manual process are significantly reduced, ensuring the highest quality information for policy formulation.
The digitisation initiative incorporates automated checks and validations, ensuring a level of precision previously challenging to achieve. This results in a CPI that accurately reflects market price fluctuations, empowering policymakers to make decisions that align with Nigeria’s economic realities. The ongoing effort to re base the CPI by completely reconstructing the consumer basket of items and digitally updating the list of market outlets, is expected to revolutionise price statistics in Nigeria.
Furthermore, the digitisation process allows for real-time entry and analysis of price statistics in the field, enabling faster reporting of data. This timely data empowers policymakers to respond swiftly to economic shifts, make proactive decisions, and mitigate the impact of inflation while fostering sustainable economic growth.
Prince Adeyemi Adeniran also mentioned the Bureau’s consideration of web scraping for the production and reporting of price data. This additional initiative aims to provide more comprehensive prices information to users, further enhancing the accuracy and availability of economic data.
The Statistician General of the Federation emphasised the Bureau’s commitment to developing and modernising Nigeria’s statistical landscape in line with global trends. He called for collaboration, partnership, and support from all stakeholders to ensure the nationwide scaling and internationalisation of the digitisation process.
Prince Adeyemi Adeniran expressed profound gratitude to UNECA for their strong support and commitment to the project. The Bureau’s federated structure, coordinating 36 independent sub-national statistical offices, ensures that the benefits of the digitisation process will be cascaded down to all levels.
The success of the pilot phase was attributed to the hard work and dedication of the Prices and Trade Department and the ICT Department of the Bureau. Their efforts in scaling up and operationalizing the initiative nationwide were commended, with the assurance of continued support from the Statistician General of the Federation.
The digitisation of the Consumer Price Index represents a significant step forward for Nigeria’s statistical system, enhancing the accuracy and availability of economic data for evidence-based policy decision making and programme monitoring.
