The SADC Regional Training Workshop on Supply-Use Tables (SUTs) for National Accounts, currently taking place in Mauritius from 23-27 September 2024, is a key initiative under the World Bank-funded Regional Statistics Project. This workshop has brought together statisticians from the SADC region to improve their technical skills in compiling SUTs, which are essential for economic analysis and policy planning. SUTs provide a comprehensive overview of how goods and services move through the economy, bridging data on production, trade, and consumption. This detailed economic insight is crucial for understanding regional and national value chains and informing evidence-based decision-making.
In his opening remarks, Mr. Jagai Deepchandsingh, Senior Officer for Statistics at the SADC Secretariat, emphasised the importance of these tables for ensuring accurate and harmonised national accounts. He noted that SUTs offer a clear picture of how goods and services are produced and consumed within SADC Member States, providing critical data that can be used to track industrial activities, trade flows, and economic performance. The workshop aims to build not only the technical capacity of participants but also to promote collaboration between statisticians and economists. This partnership will help align statistical methods with economic analysis, enabling the region to better measure and monitor key drivers of growth, including manufacturing, services, trade and overall priority regional value chains.
To illustrate the above, Mr. Calicious Tutalife, Senior Programme Officer for Value Chains at the SADC Secretariat, made a presentation to highlight the vital link between supply-use tables and value chains. He pointed out that SUTs are indispensable tools for understanding how value chains operate across the region and therefore demonstrates the power of national accounts data in driving policies in support of regional trade, industrialisation, and economic integration.
The insights shared at this workshop are expected to strengthen national statistical infrastructures across SADC countries, enabling them to produce more consistent and comparable SUTs. With a more robust statistical foundation, SADC will be better equipped to measure economic performance accurately and improve regional trade and investment planning. This effort aligns with the broader objectives of the Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP) 2020-2030, which focuses on improving statistical systems and creating a solid foundation for analysing and supporting regional trade and regional value chains.
