A critical piece by London-based magazine, Economist recently generated attention for describing former President Goodluck Jonathan as an “ineffectual buffoon” while also knocking the economic policies of President Muhammadu Buhari. Indeed, the magazine asserted that Buhari’s policies would make an already bad situation more miserable.
It is therefore a bit relieving to see that Nigeria is missing from a list of the world’s most miserable countries as compiled by global finance reporting outlet, Bloomberg. On top of the list is Venezuela which has been badly affected by declining oil prices. Argentina comes in second while Africa’s second largest economy, South Africa is ranked the third most miserable economy.
South Africa is grouped alongside Greece and Ukraine as countries desperately trying to stop unemployment from growing worse while Venezuela and Argentina are described as being faced with severe inflation.
According to Bloomberg, “the ranking of 63 economies is compiled by adding a country’s jobless rate and inflation, a long-standing calculation in which a higher score indicates more misery. Venezuela’s 159.7 tally for the 2016 misery index done by Bloomberg quadruples the next-worst ranking Argentina.”
Bloomberg further explains that “Misery index calculations were compiled using the median estimates in Bloomberg economic surveys from the past three months. Figures for 2015 inflation and unemployment data reflect the average over the year and use the most current data available for each country.”
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