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ECA Workshop on Distributive Trade Statistics in the African Context Addis Ababa, 29 May 2008 (ECA) - The African Centre for Statistics of the UNECA in collaboration with the United Nations Statistics Division is running a four day workshop on “ Implementation of International Recommendations for Distributive Trade Statistics in African Context: Challenges and Good Practices ”. Statisticians from fifteen African Countries are attending demonstrating the importance that these governments attach to the improvement of distributive trade statistics in support of the compilation of national accounts statistics and statistical development in general. Professor Ben Kiregyera opened the workshop by highlighting that the measurement of distributive trade in relation to both poverty reduction and national development cannot be over-emphasized. He noted that in many African countries, retail trade, gross trade and transportation represent a significant part of economic establishments in the business register, hence the importance of collecting quality, timely and cross-nationally comparable data on distributive trade. The collection of quality distributive trade statistics (DTS) is recognized as the first step in compilation of national accounts and quality DTS are essential for balancing the GDP production side at basic prices as well as the GDP expenditure side at consumer prices. However a number of assessments of statistical development in Africa have highlighted serious problems and challenges with compilation of distributive trade statistics including the following: • out of date and incomplete business registers, • inefficient use of administrative prices data • non-compliance with the recommendations of IRDTS concepts, • inadequate application of sound statistical techniques in sampling and data processing, and • the lack of survey data on the various components of prices, notably basic prices, VAT, trade levels and trade margins. The poor quality of these data impacts on the compilation of GDP by expenditure and by industry. This was the motivation for the workshop, which constitutes a very applied approach to working together to improve the quality and use of distributive trade data. There have been frank exchanges of experiences amongst the participating countries resulting in the creation of a strong supportive group of statisticians who will continue to have contact with one another and with the ACS and UNSD even after this four day workshop has ended. |
