Additional Financing for the SADC Regional Statistics Project

active

Prospective

The SADC Regional Statistics Project will promote the production of high-quality statistics, regional harmonization of statistics, and timely dissemination to enhance their use. With support from the SADC secretariat, quality and harmonized statistics will be produced and disseminated by the National Statistical Offices (NSOs) of SADC Member States and project beneficiary countries. The timely release of statistics and collaboration with policymakers and other stakeholders will lead to enhanced use of statistics, which – in turn – encourages more production of statistics creating a positive feedback loop enhancing the sustainability of the project objective. Specialized training and capacity-building activities will be implemented to enhance national monitoring and evaluation systems, involving NSOs and agencies from the governments of participants countries to promote evidence-based policymaking. At the country level, the project will support activities to raise the level of national statistical systems (NSS), allowing countries to align themselves to SADC standards, per the SADC Protocol on Statistics. The project will cover the following SADC IDA countries: Madagascar, Malawi, Zambia and Comoros, as well as a non-SADC state, Sao Tome and Principe. The project will also include the SADC secretariat. The estimated cost is tentatively US$ 104.5 million, to be provided through a combination of International Development Association (IDA) credits and grants from country-specific and regional windows. The project is planned for five years. The project has three components: Component 1: Improve harmonization, quality, and dissemination of core social and economic statistics. This component supports the implementation of the Regional Strategy for the Development of Statistics (RSDS) that the Southern African Development Community (SADC) started implementing in 2015 and that is reflected in the SADC Protocol on Statistics, the legal framework to enable and enhance statistical development and innovation in SADC member states. Under this component, SADC will primarily support NSOs to improve their ability to collect and produce statistical information by developing guidelines and delivering technical assistance for data collection from administrative records, expanding the use of specialized software, assisting development and maintenance of Statistical Business Registers, piloting processing Big Data for statistical purposes, delivering trainings for accessing and use of spatial information to collect census and survey data (GIS) through cartographic work, providing advanced training on sampling techniques, develop harmonized survey modules to collect household-level surveys to generate more data on informal sector, poverty, labor statistics, gender, migration, etc. The component will also deliver technical assistance and trainings to conduct of agricultural census and surveys. On macroeconomic data, the component will develop and implement harmonized Supply and Use Tables (SUTs) to generate regional value chains, will support country level harmonization of National Accounts (including rebasing of GDP), provide technical assistance to develop Integrated Economic Accounts (Environment) and Satellite Accounts, and develop and implement regional Producer Price Indices, Trade Indices and Index of Industrial Production. The component will also strengthen the capacity of the SADC Statistics Department in terms of expert training and equipment, generate partnership opportunities with academic institutions in the region on use of data for policy design, implementation, and evaluation, especially to monitor the implementation of the Protocol on Statistics.Component 2: Close gaps in data production, statistical capacity, and data use at country level seeks to extend the D4P package in beneficiary countries under the harmonizing guidelines, recognizing initial institutional and human resource capacities and building on existing core statistics, infrastructure and technical capacity. The activities planned under this component therefore aim to close some of the most important gaps in data production, equipment, materials, technical expertise, dissemination and use at a country level. These activities are mostly focused on country-level NSOs, however, to enhance use of data for policy design and monitoring, some countries will also undertake activities to strengthen analytical capacity at other public institutions, such as the Ministry of Finance. Component 3: Project Management will oversee, supervise and monitoring the first two components.

World Bank

Project

Manufacturing (Industrial), Telecommunications, Residential, Raw Materials, Government, Education, Commercial