"Whenever negotiating complex economic agreements with uncertain outcomes, you need your own set of numbers, otherwise you may be in a weak position!"
Andrew Mold, the acting Director of the Sub-regional Office for Eastern Africa (SRO-EA) of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), made these comments at the opening of a 5-day training for government officials in Rwanda on macroeconomic modelling,
"Depending on the numbers provided by others is generally not a good idea in any negotiating setting, be that with international partners, multilateral organisations like the WTO. You need to be able to generate your own estimates, so that you can negotiate from a position of strength" he continued.
The 5-day tailor-made course which has just been completed in Kigali, Rwanda, was jointly organized by the African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP), the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning of Rwanda (MINECOFIN) and the sub-regional office of ECA.
The training workshop was attended by around 30 government officials and representatives of relevant institutions, including MINECOFIN, National Bank of Rwanda, and the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda. The trainers were lecturers Adeola Adenikinju and Abiola Akande from the University of Ibadan.
"To give the Sustainable Development Goals all the chances to be successfully met, special attention is to be paid to capacity development, and thus, we consider macroeconomic modelling courses essential to support sound decision making and planning that are evidence based" said Karima Bounemra Ben Soltane, IDEP Director, in her closing remarks.
The training course provided an overview on the principles, methods and tools of macroeconomic modelling, with a focus on Computable General Equilibrium Models. These models are complex but allow a better comprehension of the linkages between different sectors of the economy. With the help of these models, policymakers and economists involved in development planning can develop a more sophisticated view of the interaction between policy measures and developmental outcomes.
