EN/AGNA/2014/Doc/00

African Group on National Accounts Meeting

African Project on the

Implementation of the 2008 System of National Accounts

3-6 February 2014

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Opening Remarks

The Director (African Centre for Statistics), UNECA

The African Group on National Accounts (AGNA) Meeting on the Implementation of the 2008 System of National Accounts

03 February 2014 to 06 February 2014

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is my pleasure as the Director of the African Centre for Statistics (ACS) to welcome you to ‘The African Group on National Accounts (AGNA) Meeting on the Implementation of the 2008 System of National Accounts (SNA)’ which is jointly organized by Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), African Union Commission (AUC) and the African Development Bank (AfDB). This AGNA meeting comes one month after the launching of the African Project on the implementation of the 2008 SNA held in Nouakchott, Mauritania from the 19th to the 23rd of January 2014.

The African Group on National Accounts (AGNA) was created by the Statistical Commission for Africa (StatCom-Africa) in January 2008 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In the past three years, after a series of meetings, the AGNA has developed a common regional strategy and later a regional project document in order to support the implementation of the 2008 SNA in African countries. The African Regional Strategy was considered to be consistent with the International Implementation Strategy for the 2008 SNA at the “Seminar on the Implementation of the 2008 System of National Accounts in Africa” held in April 2011 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As we all know, National Account is the cornerstone of all macroeconomic statistics and is considered the lens through which we look at our economies. In the aftermath of the recent international financial crises, there has been increasing recognition that the availability of comprehensive and timely economic and financial data for the African continent is essential for the formulation and implementation of sound macroeconomic policies and also that the dissemination of the data to the public at large facilitates investment decisions. Invariably, data availability with the needed quality can predict as well as reduce the frequency and moderate the severity of future episodes of unusual financial turbulence.

National account is without doubt the most complicated macroeconomic statistics, because they highly depend on providing information from a wide variety of data sources. National Accounts play a fundamental role in tracking and understanding economic stability, sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction.

National accounts have evolved over the years. The innovations like the development of the sector accounts, input-output tables and the arrival of the first guidelines were stimulated by the Keynesian revolution and the development of macro-econometric model-building and brought the need of institutionalization and standardization. Just in the nineties, we had the 1993 SNA. Now we are ready for 2008 SNA.

As National Accountants we confronted with many challenges among which are the increasing complexity of measuring domestic and cross-border activities; the growing demand for statistics on new activities; the need to balance your data collection strategies and outputs against limited resources; heightened demand for timely statistics; and the importance of maintaining the relevance of your statistical outputs, the need for timely and transparent reporting of national accounts components and other macroeconomic aggregates.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The expectations are that the result of the meeting will lead to the development of a concrete blueprint for follow-up actions to be undertaken by various stakeholders, which include the countries, to implement the African Project on SNA, as well as the directives on the development of important technical documents and frameworks for strengthening statistical governance and the institutional capacity of national statistical offices of Member States.

ECA values your continued input to the development of statistics in Africa and we are confident that your contributions would be of beneficial in the SNA 2008 implementation process. I therefore invite you to actively participate in this historical moment which is part of the ongoing statistical renaissance in the African continent.

You are Welcome to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Thanks

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