WAMA STATISTICAL PROGRAMME 2009- 2011
The West African Monetary Agency (WAMA) is a specialised autonomous agency of
the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) responsible for the
monitoring, coordination and implementation of the ECOWAS Monetary Cooperation
Programme (EMCP). The ultimate objective of the EMCP is the establishment of a
single monetary zone to be managed by a community central bank.
In order to create the requisite economic and financial conditions for the sustainability
of the future currency, member States are expected to adopt measures aimed at ensuring
the harmonisation of monetary systems and the creation of a stable macroeconomic
environment. Member States shall especially undertake to:
· Comply with established macroeconomic convergence criteria;
· harmonise their budgetary, monetary and financial policies;
harmonise their exchange rate regulations and adopt a market driven exchange
rate regime;
establish an effective community market through trade
liberalization policies, by removing tariff and non-tariff barriers;
liberalise their money and capital markets, as well as facilitate the
establishment of regional stock exchanges in order to stimulate savings and
growth.
Macroeconomic convergence, which is a vital component of the ECOWAS Monetary
Cooperation Programme (EMCP) accords priority to the following areas: price
stability, stabilization of public finances, control of monetary financing of public deficit
and maintenance of gross external reserves at appropriate levels.1
1Member countries are expected to meet set targets to ensure a stable macroeconomic situation and a successful
monetary integration.
WAMA conducts regular evaluation of country performance with regard to
convergence criteria.
There is no gainsaying that better evaluation presupposes the existence of comparable
statistics in terms of how they are produced and presented. There exist some disparities
in the mode of gathering, processing and compilation of economic and financial statistics
used in the evaluation of macroeconomic convergence.
It is for this reason that the Statistics Department of the ECOWAS Commission
embarked on a statistics harmonisation programme as far back as 2001. The first phase
of this programme focused on national accounts and consumer price indices. A lot of
work has been done in respect of statistics harmonization. Currently, to a large extent,
ECOWAS GDPs are comparable and the last evaluation conducted by AFRISAT in
respect of consumer price indices indicates that only Liberia is significantly.
However, ongoing harmonisation activities only cover a small range of statistical
indicators used in the convergence programme. Public finance, external and monetary
sector statistics have still not been covered. This is even more disturbing when one
considers the fact that nine out of the ten ECOWAS convergence criteria are related to
these sectors. Besides, during the preparation of tables in respect of the multilateral
surveillance data base (ECOMAC), significant divergences emerged in the mode of
compilation of those statistics. This divergence relates to the scope, treatment and
presentation of statistics.
To accelerate the pace of harmonization, WAMA and the ECOWAS Commission
agreed on sharing of areas of intervention. ECOWAS will manage economic statistics
namely national accounts, consumer price, external trade, demographic statistics and
sector statistics (agriculture, mining, fisheries) while WAMA will oversee activities
relating to public finance statistics, monetary and financial data and balance of
payments.
It is against this background that WAMA intends to conduct a harmonization
programme that will cover statistics on fiscal, monetary and external sectors