| EMBARGO The contents of this press release and the related Report must not be quoted or summarized in the print, broadcast or electronic media before 13 April 2011,17:00 |
Geneva, 13 April 2011 - Staff from a number of Palestinian Authority ministries and agencies will complete on Friday a week-long course provided by UNCTAD on building sovereign government capacities to manage, plan and forecast economic development policies.
The applied training programme is being implemented in cooperation with the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS). It runs from 10 to 14 April at PCBS headquarters in Ramallah, and is being attended by 15 Palestinian professionals. In addition to staff from the PCBS, experts from the Ministries of National Economy, Finance, Planning, Labour, the Palestinian Monetary Authority, and the Palestinian Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS) are participating.
The objective of the course is to equip the participants with hands-on experience on how to use quantitative models to forecast economic indicators and to formulate and assess the impact/potential of alternative economic policies. The training is making use of UNCTAD´s third generation macro-econometric simulation model of the Palestinian economy, which was first designed in the early 1990s. Instruction during the week has ranged from how to forecast the Palestinian economy under alternative scenarios to quantitative assessments of fiscal, monetary, trade and labour policies. One exercise covered the potential impact of a future Palestinian national currency. Another assessed the economic effects of the Israeli military operation that took place in Gaza from December 2008 to January 2009.
The course is part of an intensified technical cooperation programme undertaken by UNCTAD´s Assistance to the Palestinian People Unit (APPU) and covering areas of development strategies, customs modernization, trade facilitation and logistics, enterprise development and debt management. These activities are being implemented in close consultation with the Palestinian Authority, civil society partners and international development institutions. The efforts advance a long history of cooperation between the Palestinian Authority and UNCTAD, and build on the accomplishments of a training programme conducted in 2006 on an earlier version of the simulation framework.
The training workshop is interactive, with participants required to switch from theoretical understanding to direct application of quantitative techniques collectively and independently. During the training sessions, participants are asked to apply these newly acquired skills to practical experiences in their daily professional lives.
It is expected that the challenging questions raised during the training course will expand Palestinian policy-making capacity to optimize - under the continuing conditions of occupation and restricted public policy space - the use of optional economic policy strategies required to strengthen the economy and lay the basis for a viable and independent Palestinian State as envisaged by the relevant United Nations resolutions.
