Workshop on African Economic Statistics Compilation: Findings & Conclusions

1. Regional Workshop for African Countries on Compilation of Basic Economic Statistics Addis Ababa, 16-19 October 2007Findings and conclusions of the workshop’s Pretoria meeting: an overviewthe complete report is available at:http://unstats.un.org/unsd/economic_stat/Economic_Census/pretoria%20workshop.htmVladimir MarkhonkoUnited Nations Statistics Division

2. Content General • Availability of data and policy relevance • Legal and institutional infrastructure • Economic surveys • Economic censuses • Administrative data and business register • Basic economic statistics and compilation of national accounts Pretoria meeting

3. The workshop was jointly organized by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) and Statistics South Africa (Stat SA) and was held on 23-26 July 2007 in Pretoria at Stat SA Headquarters. • The main purpose of the workshop was to initiate the new phase of the review process of African country practices in compilation of basic economic statistics in order to build up countries statistical capacity by identifying and promoting good data compilation practices and facilitating country-to-country cooperation. • The workshop was attended by 23 participants from the following nine countries: Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mauritius, Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, Tanzania and Zambia. Pretoria meeting

4. General The workshop: welcomed the UNSD initiative as timely for further improvement in compilation of basic economic statistics in African countries; emphasized necessity to ensure broader involvement of African countries in the review and assessment process and suggested that the next workshop should have a broader country and multilingual representation; found that more clarity is needed with respect to the definition of scope of “Basic Economic Statistics” (BES); Pretoria meeting

5. General agreed that market activities should be the main focus of basic economic statistics; however, for many African countries non-market economic activities remain important and their statistical treatment should be further discussed, their statistical treatment agreed upon and implemented; concluded that compilation of statistics reflecting informal sector should be part of BES; stressed that compilation and dissemination of quality indicators should be part of the regular work programmes in economic statistics as well as compilation and dissemination of metadata; Pretoria meeting

6. General stressed that more attention should be given to practical issues such as description of good data compilation practices under different country circumstances, effective enforcement mechanisms; endorsed the UNSD plans to place on its website good practices in compilation of basic economic statistics and to prepare related handbooks/manuals; close cooperation between UNSD and ECA was welcomed; found that national statistical offices need to improve their visibility and sensitize other agencies with respect to usefulness of produced economic statistics; urged NSOs to make economic statistics more easily accessible and user friendly; sustainable promotion campaigns should be launched to better educate users; Pretoria meeting

7. General expressed appreciation of assistance provided by Stats SA to many African countries in improving their economic statistics and welcomed further strengthening of cooperation in this area between all African countries, UNSD, ECA and other international and regional organizations; stressed the need to ensure better and more systematic staff training recognized importance of country-to-country staff training to ensure exchange of good practices and holding regular regional workshops ‘to train trainers’ with active participation of international and regional organizations; Pretoria meeting

8. I. Availability of data and policy relevance recognized that availability of data has to be significantly improved and better monitoring of user needs is required; in particular, recognized that more attention should be given to:  short term indicators;  provision of more detailed data in terms of activity/product and regional breakdowns;  construction, service sector, employment and agricultural statistics. asked UNSD and ECA to cooperate with other international organizations to ensure preparation of the needed guidelines including on good practices. Pretoria meeting

9. II. Legal and institutional infrastructure concluded that this infrastructure is mostly adequate, the issue is how to make the existing legal provisions work better; emphasized that authority of NSOs should be raised higher; delegation of certain data compilation/dissemination activities to other agencies should be seen as a resource saving device; concluded that placing statistical units in other governmental agencies under condition that they provide statistical services to those agencies and collaborate with NSO is a good practice; confirmed that establishment/reinforcement and promotion of work of advisory committees should continue; Pretoria meeting

10. III. Economic surveys found that unavailability or existence of non-reliable and/or not-updated sample survey frames/lists is the most fundamental and common problem; confirmed that low response rates to statistical surveys are a common phenomenon, so identification and use of more effective measures to reverse this process are required, concluded that the area sample surveys are to continue; need to clearly identify their merits and drawbacks and document them; encouraged further sharing country experiences in survey design (UNSD/ECA roles); Pretoria meeting

11. iii. Economic surveys confirmed the central role of business register and recognized the need to develop strategic programmes to establish/improve such registers preferably using unique register unit identifier; encouraged use of “establishment” as the statistical unit; confirmed that there is a need in finding different ways of obtaining the necessary information and in adopting a more integrated approach to data compilation; Pretoria meeting

12. IV. Economic censuses confirmed that many countries have a clear need to continue conducting economic censuses; this need is especially evident where access to administrative data is very difficult and/or such data are significantly fragmented and of a poor quality/insufficient; concluded that censuses can be conducted as economy wide censuses or as a sequence of sectoral/industry specific censuses; endorses the UNSD intention to prepare a Handbook on Good Practices in Economic Censuses and invited all interested countries to actively cooperate with UNSD and ECA in this project by providing a detailed description of their current practices and needs; Pretoria meeting

13. V. Administrative data and business register recognized that systematic and increasing use of administrative data (AD) should become over time an integral element of national programmes of economic statistics; emphasized the need in making special efforts to identify and apply the best available practices in establishment, maintenance and use of statistical business registers and invited UNSD to consider this request as a matter of priority while developing its research programme and technical assistance activities (in cooperation with ECA); Pretoria meeting

14. VI. Basic economic statistics and compilation of national accounts confirmed that provision of the data for national accounts is one of the top priorities; therefore, NSOs should develop their basic compilation procedures in such a way as to ensure the best possible approximation of the SNA concepts. BES statisticians and national accountants should review regularly their practices and problems; in particular: the estimation of national accounts aggregates as residuals should be avoided; benchmarking of NA should be made at least every 5 years, preferably in conformity with the economic censuses or household surveys cycles; issues relevant to the use of different financial and calendar year should be tackled in a coordinated manner by NA and BES. Pretoria meeting

15. This completes an overview of findings and conclusions of the workshop at its Pretoria meeting. One of the main tasks of this meeting is to build on them taking into account experiences of other African countries and regional organizations in order to provide UNSD and ECA with a necessary input into their work programmes aiming at enhancing capacity of African countries in compilation of basic economic statistics. Thank you for attention! Pretoria meeting