In accordance with its 2014 Annual Work Plan, SESRIC organised the Training Course on 'Social Accounting Matrices' at the National Statistical Office (ONS) Islamic Republic of Mauritania in Nouakchott on 17-19 June 2014 within the framework of the Statistical Capacity Building (StatCaB) Programme. The Course was provided by Ms. Bahija Nali, Statistics Expert at HCP of Kingdom of Morocco with participation of relevant officials of ONS.

A Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) is a square matrix in which each account is represented by a row and a column. It provides a comprehensive picture of the economic transactions of an economy. Due to its accounting consistency and comprehensiveness in recording data, the SAM has become the preferred tool to calibrate computable general equilibrium (CGE) models—such as Maquette for MDG Simulation (MAMS) that is, they are useful to define base-year values for most endogenous variables as well as compute most of the structural parameters of the model.

The subject area “Social Accounting Matrices’” is currently classified under the “National Accounts” domain, an activities category under the “Economic Statistics” domain.  The training course on “Social Accounting Matrices” covered the following topics:

Introduction

• Introduction to Social Accounting Matrix (SAM)
• Definition& Concepts

The structure of a Social Accounting Standard Matrix

• Social Accounting Standard Matrix Presentation
• Fine-tunings on SAM
• SAM Properties

Matrix Accounting Disaggregation

• Tables-Resources-Jobs (TRJ)
• Tables of Integrated Economic Accounts (TCEI)
• Transfer Matrices

Utility of a Social Accounting Matrix

Hands-on Exercise for an SAM

Photos