STATISTICAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE WEST AFRICAN MONETARY ZONE

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STATISTICAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE WEST AFRICAN
MONETARY ZONE

• FORUM FOR STATISTICAL DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA
• UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE CENTRE
• ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA
• 12 13 MAY 2004

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Layout

• Introduction
• Background of the WAMZ and WAMI
• Objective and scope of the statistic programme in
  the WAMZ
• The Magnitude of statistical activities
• Sources of on-going assistance and coordination
  with partners
• Areas for further intervention
• Conclusion

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Background

• The WAMZ 2nd Monetary Zone in West Africa
  takes its root in the long standing pursuit of
  economic and monetary integration by ECOWAS
• In April 2000, Heads of State and Government of
  six countries(Gambia, Ghana, Guinea,Liberia,
  Nigeria and Sierra Leone) authorized a fast track
  approach
• Created WAMI to take up day to day responsibility
  to implement the fast track action plan for
  monetary unification and establishment of common
  central bank, WACB

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Background (contd)

• WAMIs mission consist of the following
• Monitoring macroeconomic convergencein the WAMZ
• Preparation for the common currency in the WAMZ
• Establishing the WAMZ central Bank, WACB

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Objective and Scope of the Statistical Programme
in the WAMZ

• Overall Objective
• Core instrument to promote the integration
  process
• Focus on making available relevant, timely and
  reliable stats info to used in the WAMZ for
  planning, monitoring, policy formulation and
  decision making
• Specific objective
• Harmonisation of statistics and capacity building
• To make available comparable, accurate and up to
  date stats for convergence surveillance
• And support policy coordination at the level of
  the zone
• Scope
• Macroeconomic statistics in the real sector,
  fiscal sector, monetary sector and external
  sector from which the convergence criteria are
  measured and which support the assessment of
  overall economic performance

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Magnitude of the Statistical Activities in the
WAMZ

• This is best appreciated from a general
  assessment of the quality of the current stats in
  the countries
• The activities which are centered around
  harmonisation broadly include ensuring
• Methodological soundness w.r.t.
  definitions,scope, coverage, and classification
  systems used
• Comprehensiveness, Accuracy and reliability
  w.r.t. statistical techniques and source data
• Serviceability of the statistics w.r.t.
  periodicity and timeliness
• Will throw brief light on where we are and what
  we want to do in the WAMZ countries on the
  national accounts, the CPI, fiscal data, monetary
  statistics and trade data

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Magnitude of Activities (contd)

• The National Accounts/GDP
• GDP key indicator derived from N/ac useful in
  calculation of most convergence criteria of the
  WAMZ
• To ensure comparability of performance,
  compilation methods must be harmonised and
  uniform in the zone in line with SNA 93

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Magnitude of Activities (contd)

• What is the current status in the WAMZ?
• Countries are at varying degrees of development
  of their national accounts systems and GDP
  estimates of varying qualities
• Differences in coverage
• Outdates censuses and surveys of institutional
  units and sectors and old registers
• Differences in classification systems in use
• Differences in base years
• Varying lags in frequency of benchmarking and
  revisions of estimates
• Lags in the dissemination of the national
  accounts statistics

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Magnitude of Activities (contd)

• What are we planning on doing in the countries?
• Ensure that all countries fully attain the 1st
  stage in the implementation of SNA93 i.e.
  improving the quality of the basis indicator, GDP
  measured by both production and expenditure
  approaches
• This involves
• Updating and fine-tuning sector surveys and
  institutional censuses to improve coverage
• Updating the classification schemes COICOP,
  COFOG, ISIC
• Improve measurement of unrecorded activities and
  informal sector

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Magnitude of Activities (contd)

• Consumer Price Indices
• The key statistic needed to measure the single
  digit inflation criterion
• This means that there should be uniformity and
  comparability in the measurement of the CPI in
  member states w.r.t. coverage, classification,
  index calculation method, base years or reference
  period for index and weights and resolution of
  technical problems

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Magnitude of Activities (contd)

• What is the current status in the WAMZ?
• Countries differ in these key measurement
  features of the CPI
• Only two countries, Ghana and Nigeria, report
  composite indices of national coverage
• Indices in the Gambia, Guinea and Sierra Leone
  cover only capital city, and for the Gambia only
  low income population
• COICOP classification not adopted in Gambia and
  Sierra Leone
• Base year older than 10 years and weights derived
  from old household budget surveys in Gambia and
  Sierra Leone
• Some lags in the timeliness of CPI

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Magnitude of Activities (contd)

• What are we planning on doing in the countries ?
• Ensuring the adoption of COICOP in all the
  countries ECOWAS is doing this
• Undertaking Household Budget Surveys to update
  base year and weights
• Facilitate nationwide price collection based on
  new COICOP questionnaire to expand coverage

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Magnitude of Activities (contd)

• Government Fiscal Statistics
• This data set very important for convergence
  monitoring
• Countries required to follow GFS 1986 framework
  for definitions, concepts, classifications and
  accounting conventions
• The status in the countries
• Main area of difference is w.r.t. classification,
  comprehensiveness of data from source on both
  revenue and expenditure and timeliness

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Magnitude of Activities (contd)

• Differences in coverage, extra-budgetary and
  special funds not captured in some countries
• Lack of data on stock of domestic arrears
• Proliferation of government accounts in
  commercial banks
• Misclassification problem monetary statistics due
  to inappropriate definition of government to
  commercial banks
• Lack of appropriate integrated financial
  management system in all the countries which
  affect timeliness
• Magnitude of task here for harmonisation is huge

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Magnitude of Activities (contd)

• Monetary and Financial Statistics
• Most stable and timely data set in the countries
• The task here is to compile zone wide monetary
  aggregate

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Magnitude of Activities (contd)

• Trade and Balance of Payment
• The main data quality issue to be addressed is
  with respect to coverage of both import and
  export information for intra-zone and external
  trade

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Challenges

• Low statistical awareness and appreciation among
  policy and decision makers in the zone
• Inadequate resource allocation to statistics in
  member countries
• Disparities in human statistical resources
• Lack of effective dissemination (data base and
  interconnectivity)
• Lags in collection and dissemination

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On-going Assistance and Collaboration

• USAID Advisory assistance
• ECB and ESCB Technical assistance on
  statistical issues of relevance to harmonisation
• ECOWAS Secretariat CPI National A/c
• ADB ICP- Africa
• UNECA

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Areas for Further Intervention

• Funding
• Additional technical cooperation
• World Bank /IMF Data sharing through a WAMZ
  live database
• Participation in Training programme

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Conclusion

• Current efforts in the WAMZ undoubtedly need
  further developments
• Partner assistance through funding, advisory and
  collaborative initiative is highly desired to
  foster our statistical capacity building efforts.

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Magnitude of Activities (contd)