AfDB Prepares for African Round of International Comparison Program

14 June 2010
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African Development Bank (Abidjan)
press release

The African Development Bank (AfDB) will begin its preparations for the International Comparison Program (ICP) 2011 for Africa with two weeks of workshops in Nairobi from Monday, 14 June to Friday, 25 June, 2010.

The ICP is a program that collates prices for various goods and services in countries. . It then brings them together with other economic data from those countries' national accounts to create Purchasing Power Parities (PPPs).

Those PPPs are then used to recalculate the countries' Gross Domestic Products into a common currency. That process lets economists, policy-makers, donors, and others to have a clear measure to test progress on such matters as poverty reduction efforts, free of the distortions of currencies, exchange rates and other factors.

All major international development and aid agencies, including the African Development Bank, the IMF, the World Bank, UN Agencies, etc, uses PPP figures to analyze the economic and social situation in their areas of operation.

The ICP is a complex and the largest international program in the world, it requires the involvement of national, regional and international organizations to agree on a common work plan.

With that in mind, the AfDB is launching the ICP 2011-Africa round at the Nairobi workshops in June 2010. It will bring together approximately 200 participants to the Nairobi workshops from 52 Regional Member Countries (Somalia will be absent); various pan-African and sub-regional institutions, and the World Bank.

The participants will agree on a work plan, and will be given all the necessary information for the implementation of the 2011 ICP-Africa round.

The process will be divided into two main workshops, one following the other:

Monday, 14 June to Wednesday, 23 June: Training Workshop for price statisticians and national accounts experts from all participating countries

This workshop will deal mainly with ICP methodology, PPP computation methods and data collection in 2011.

Thursday, 24 June to Friday, 25 June: Workshop of Heads of National Statistical Offices, price statisticians, national accounts, and experts from all participating countries

The participants will review and agree on governance arrangements, and program implementation modalities at country, sub-regional and regional level, together with other issues.

Contacts

David Short

Read the original article on African Development Bank (AfDB).

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