Speaking at the event held at Paradise Suites Hotel, Baboucar Cham, head of Human Resources at the Central Bank of The Gambia, explained that external statistics, which comprise the balance of payments and other statistics are among the primary statistics which policymakers and markets rely as a basis for the decisions.
He added that the balance of payments records the value of a country’s transactions with the rest of the world in goods, services, income, and transfers, as well as the changes in a country’s financial claims and liabilities to the rest of the world.
“These statistics on the external sector are key to policymakers, and analysts in the public sector, private sector and international organisations. This is because external sector statistics assist economic agents to determine the link between the domestic and external economy, and the sustainability of the factors influencing external transactions,” he stated.
Mr. Cham further said that various central banks in the member countries are at varied stages in the implementation of the balance of payment Manual VI and are adopting their data collection methodologies to the new guide as well as broadening the scope of the collection.
Cham reiterated that the compilation of external statistics is becoming more complicated due to recent changes such as transactions, explaining that there have been changes in institutional units; the nature of current account transactions, and an increase in cross-border financial activity, among others.
“Hence, monitoring and enhancing data quality in the context of such rapidly changing economies tend to impose heavy constraints on compilers of such external statistics,” he said.
Emmanuel Owusu-Afriyie, director of the Research and Macroeconomic Management Department at WAIFEM, also reiterated that the objective of the training was to get participants acquainted with the revised Balance of Payments Manual (BPM6).
He highlighted that the training was expected to upgrade the knowledge and skills of participants in the compilation of the balance of payments, the systems of national accounts and the interlinkages between the balance of payments and the sectoral accounts.
“The training has been designed to cover several key topics such as conceptual framework and core accounting principles, financial instruments and functional categories in BPM6, goods account, service account, primary income account, secondary income and capital accounts, direct investment, portfolio and other investment, reserve assets; main achievements, challenges and prospects, international investment position as well as training,” he said.
