By
Maxwell Awumah, GNA
Accra, Nov 19, GNA –
Mr Bakary Dosso, Acting Director, Economic Commission for Africa Sub-Regional
Office for West Africa (ECA SRO-WA) has reiterated ECA’s commitment to work in
close collaboration with regional agencies to ensure the production, dissemination
and use of quality data and comparable statistics in Africa.
He said ECA has
therefore becomes the one-spot for the provision of up-to-date, harmonised,
disaggregated statistics with a gender dimension to facilitate prime
evidence-based to inform policy and decision-making.
Mr Dosso made these
dispositions at ECA SRO-WA organised workshop on economic monitoring,
short-term economic forecasting and modeling 2019-2020 for English-speaking
Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) including Ghana, The Gambia,
Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Cabo Verde.
The four-day
workshop is under the auspices of the Economic and Statistical Observatory for
Sub-Saharan Africa (AFRISTAT) has a main objective to share experiences on the
recent economic developments and short-term macroeconomic forecasting methods
used in English-speaking member states.
It also seeks to
contribute to the efforts made to have a short and medium term overview of the
macroeconomic indicators of the region.
He said this initiative
to produce analysis of quality economic statistics to inform policy would
foster economic growth, people’s well-being, inclusive societies and
sustainable use of the environment as set out by the Sustainable Development
agenda.
He said ECA has therefore
established its statistics centre, the African Centre for Statistics (ACS) as a
mandate to support in improving and production of quality data.
Mr Dosso said ECA
SRO-WA produces sub-regional economic and country profiles for each member
state, which is aimed at creating a platform for policy dialogue on country
specific macroeconomic and social development challenges and opportunities to
achieve structural transformation.
“One of the specific
contributions of this knowledge product is its methodology based primarily on
the compilation of data from credible national sources to provide country
profiles to aid evaluation of data collected.”
He said this meeting
was an opportunity to exchange information on countries analytical studies of
recent economic development and forecasts, to review the analytical tools and
frameworks used by individuals countries and to assess economic development of
the sub-region.
He hoped that the
workshop would be a regular consultation process that would provide quality economic
statistics to inform the regional integration agenda and mechanism in West
Africa.
Dr Koffi Simeon,
Head of Research and Development, Economic Community for West African States
Commission (ECOWAS Commission), said this opportunity would offer dialogue into
the analytical tools being used by member states and to have an up-to-date data
on macroeconomic forecasts in relation to growth, inflation, fiscal balances
and external finances.
He said action was
already initiated for all departments in forecasts in member states to collect
statistical data for instance to aid in ECOWAS single currency and put a
monitoring device in place to conduct analysis on convergence of states
performance.
Dr Iddrisu Alhassan,
Director, Ministry of Finance, called for regular organisation of such
workshops to dialogue and streamline all challenges that hinder integration of
the sub-region.
The workshop is
being attended by statisticians from national offices, economic planning
officers, chief economists and strategists and researchers.
Expected outcomes of
the workshop includes strengthening collaboration with AFRISTAT, ECOWAS, West
African Economic Monetary Union (UEMOA), West African Monetary Institute (WAMI),
West African Monetary Agency (WAMA) and African Regional Technical
Assistance Centre in West Africa (AFRITAC Ouest) in terms of support to
countries in the area of statistical information and development.
GNA
