Rédaction Africa Links 24 with Désiré-Clitandre Dzonteu
Published on 2024-03-01 13:55:03
In view of the often observed discrepancies between the data from the General Directorate of Statistics and those of the Economy concerning macroeconomic forecasts, the Prime Minister of the Transition, Raymond Ndong Sima, had a working session on February 28 with his collaborators, including the Deputy Prime Minister in charge of Planning and Prospective, Alexandre Barro Chambrier, the Minister of Oil, Marcel Abéké, as well as the technicians from the Ministry of Planning and Economy. The goal was to find ways and means to ensure reliable and usable data.
On numerous occasions, international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have drawn the attention of the former authorities and even during their recent mission to Gabon on the need to have consistency in the national account figures. To shed light on this issue, the Prime Minister of the Transition, Raymond Ndong Sima, had a working session on February 28 with several government members. The objective was to organize the framework for a real cleansing of the statistical data production and macroeconomic forecasting in the country.
The discrepancies observed in recent years between the data from the General Directorate of Statistics and the macroeconomic forecasts from the General Directorate of the Economy suggest that these figures, necessary for calculating the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), are often unreliable.
The working session chaired by the head of the Transitional government noted that “disproportionate discrepancies suggest that the produced figures are unrealistic.” “We have a duty to correct our calculation methods,” suggested the administration’s head.
“The initiative of the highest authorities is timely, it will allow us to make the data we produce at the statistical level and at the General Directorate of the Economy more and more reliable. There are some coherence issues that need to be addressed. The Prime Minister stated that it was necessary to correct and make the data that give the country credibility at the international level. We will bring out the reality of the figures that need to be produced,” said Tiwinot Francis Thierry, the Chief of Staff of the Deputy Prime Minister.
At the end of this meeting, it is up to the two administrative entities to come together and explore, as recommended by the Prime Minister, all avenues towards coherence in macroeconomic data, with a calculation of the GDP from all angles, real, monetary, and financial. “When you have a weak GDP, your ratios go adrift and the country can be discredited,” added the Prime Minister, concluding that “the GDP allows for the calculation of the debt ratio.”
“An important ratio that allows for determining if the country’s level of debt is sustainable. It is also an indicator of the country’s wealth when calculated per capita,” he explained.
Read the original article(French) on Gabon Review
