MEFMI Conducts Mission on Construction of Rwanda Social Accounting Matrix

During the period 9-20 January 2017, MEFMI conducted a first follow-up In-country Mission on the construction of a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR). Participants were drawn from the Department of Economic Statistics of the NISR in Kigali, Rwanda. Ten (10) participants attended the training, with male and female representation at 80% and 20%, respectively.

The mission team consisted of  the MEFMI Director of the Macroeconomic Management Programme Dr. Sehliselo Mpofu,  MEFMI Programme Manager in the Macroeconomic Management Programme at MEFMI Mr. Senei Molapo and Dr. Anna Lennblad, as the  resource person.

The objectives of the mission were to finalise the structure of the skeleton Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Rwanda, to construct and examine inter-account data consistency checks using the SAM, and to enter data in all the accounts in the sequence of accounts, as well as in the goods and services account, and the rest of the world account. In addition, participants were equipped with basic conceptual and practical knowledge required to work on the SAM using Rwanda data. This was demonstrated through the high level of participation during the practical sessions to construct the SAM.  The ultimate goal is for the participants to assume full ownership of the SAM so that they can use it in their daily work without external assistance. Work in the second follow-up mission, which is planned for the second half of 2017 will enable participants to use the SAM as a tool to incorporate all available macroeconomic data into one (1) coherent and structured framework and as a tool for economic analysis, mainly for poverty studies and impact analysis, given changes to the tax regime or other economic events.

By the end of this first follow-up mission, participants were able to use the SAM as a tool to check data consistency across and within the various macroeconomic accounts. For example, for each sector, the results from the Supply and Use Table (SUT) needed to balance with transactions under income and financial assets. Furthermore, relevant items in the government account had to match corresponding items in the national accounts, depository corporation survey and balance of payments. A SAM is an excellent tool to verify these data consistency issues, as well as to identify data gaps and certain errors in the data. The Director of the MEFMI Macroeconomic Management Programme, Dr. Mpofu, in her opening remarks, thanked the NISR for providing logistical support to enable the mission to take place. She explained that the first follow-up mission was being conducted at a time when MEFMI was just commencing the implementation of its Phase V Strategic Plan (2017-2021), which will continue with a bias towards tailor-made in-country specific activities, which proved very effective in the implementation of the Phase IV Strategic Plan (2016-2016). She expressed confidence that the mission would be a success.

The Director of Economic Statistics in NISR, Mr. Sebastien Manzi, thanked and commended MEFMI for the technical assistance provided to enhance capacity on national accounts and macroeconomic management. He indicated that the NISR had completed constructing the Rwanda Supply and Use Tables (SUT) for the year 2014, thus laying down foundation for the second mission. He was thankful for the work done. He indicated that the training was going to allow NISR to develop a skeleton SAM, given the amount of time, from which at the end, a decision would be made whether or not to expand (disaggregate) sectors or draw up a Sequence of Accounts.