Somalia economy size

[Midas]

I was just looking at this 2024 economic import and although you've mentioned several times @Idilinaa its onlh now that ive feel like ive fully internalized how off they're calculations are on gdp. I mean they literally calculated by adding everything else and then subtracting all imports to 4% . If even a decent chunk of these imports are like you said just somali companies based elsewhere in countries like the uae being logged as imports then we'd be easily looking at possibly 10% growth rates.

Even importing near $12 billion dollars worth of goods amd devices is probably an underestimate since I doubt they had acess to data from berbera. Still the massive almost 30% growth in imports from 2023 to 2024 is llikely is a sign of increasing economic growth.

 

[Maintainnnin]

Why do you believe Somalia's GDP is inaccurate? It's a largely dollarized economy, and the majority of the federal government's budget comes from outside sources. Its imports and exports are well documented as well.

GDP = Consumption + Investment + Government Spending + (Exports - Imports)

Investment is easy to track, so is government spending. Imports are subtracted from GDP because they aren't produced within the economy, they’re brought in from another country and count toward the exporting country's GDP.

So what exactly is your gripe with Somalia's GDP figure? Where specifically do you think the numbers are inaccurate? It seems that much of your issue stems from a conceptual misunderstanding of what GDP is and what it measures.

 

[Midas]

Why do you believe Somalia's GDP is inaccurate? It's a largely dollarized economy, and the majority of the federal government's budget comes from outside sources. Its imports and exports are well documented as well.

GDP = Consumption + Investment + Government Spending + (Exports - Imports)

Investment is easy to track, so is government spending. Imports are subtracted from GDP because they aren't produced within the economy, they’re brought in from another country and count toward the exporting country's GDP.

So what exactly is your gripe with Somalia's GDP figure? Where specifically do you think the numbers are inaccurate? It seems that much of your issue stems from a conceptual misunderstanding of what GDP is and what it measures.

They only calculated it using spending and even then they dont really have good data . They're only really accurate data is the imports/exports and govt expenditure.

Its also obviously incredibly off simply due to the fact that Kenya with a $130 billion dollar gdp imports about $24 billion dollars worth of goods and services. If we import basically 50% of the amounts of goods and services of an economy supposedly 10 times are size. That should be ringing alarm bells.

 

[Keep it a boqol]

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[Maintainnnin]

They only calculated it using spending and even then they dont really have good data . They're only really accurate data is the imports/exports and govt expenditure.

Its also obviously incredibly off simply due to the fact that Kenya with a $130 billion dollar gdp imports about $24 billion dollars worth of goods and services. If we import basically 50% of the amounts of goods and services of an economy supposedly 10 times are size. That should be ringing alarm bells.

You're right it should be ringing alarm bells. The fact that Somalia imports almost 50% as much as Kenya is a catastrophe. The difference between you and me is that you see this as either being implausible, or that Somalia is actually wealthier than the data suggests. I see it as Somalia being a tragically unproductive import dependent economy.

For the full picture, we also need to look at each country’s exports. Kenya exported $14 billion worth of goods and services last year, while Somalia managed only around $2.4 billion. So we import almost half as much as Kenya, but export only 20% as much.

Data Source for Export Figures: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.CD?locations=KE-SO

 

[Midas]

You're right it should be ringing alarm bells. The fact that Somalia imports almost 50% as much as Kenya is a catastrophe. The difference between you and me is that you see this as either being implausible, or that Somalia is actually wealthier than the data suggests. I see it as Somalia being a tragically unproductive import dependent economy.

For the full picture, we also need to look at each country’s exports. Kenya exported $14 billion worth of goods and services last year, while Somalia managed only around $2.4 billion. So we import almost half as much as Kenya, but export only 20% as much.

Data Source for Export Figures: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.CD?locations=KE-SO

I dont dispute that we dont export that much. But you should ask yourself where is the money for all these imports coming from ?
When you combine that with the relatively high prices of salaries that idnilla posted from diffrent parts of somalia you get the picture that there is obviously a much larger economy that what we see on paper.

Ultimately $80-100 billion dollars of yearly economic activity isnt that big. Without foreign loans and companies none of rhe countries with economies around that size would have the infrastructure that we see.