PRETORIA: South Africa has rebased its gross domestic product (GDP) survey, putting the size of the economy at an estimated 5.52 trillion rand ($370 billion) in 2020, the statistics agency said on Wednesday.

That was up 11% compared with a previous estimate of 4.97 trillion rand.

Africa's most advanced economy still lags behind Nigeria, which at 154.25 trillion naira ($375.3 billion) in 2020 according to the West African nation's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) was the continent's biggest.

The rebasing has also led to revisions of South Africa's past economic growth numbers, with 2020 GDP contracting 6.4% compared with a 7% contraction before the rebasing.

Most governments overhaul their GDP calculations every few years to reflect changes in output and consumption. South Africa's national accounts will be benchmarked and rebased to the year 2015 from 2010 as part of a regular revision every five years.

South Africa is struggling to regain momentum after its already weak economy was dealt a further blow by the COVID-19 pandemic.The statistics agency is scheduled to give economic growth figures for the second quarter of 2021 on Sept. 7.