Social Expenditure Monitor of Tunisia: Mapping Data and Methodology

ESCWA’s project entitled Social Expenditure Monitor (SEM) is a pioneering tool for Arab States that provides a comprehensive mapping of public social expenditure to inform budgeting and social policy reforms. The establishment of SEM in a national context would require collection and analysis of data according to an agreed and adapted SEM framework

ESCWA has developed a framework on SEM titled “Social Expenditure Monitor for Arab States: A Tool to Support Budgeting and Fiscal Policy Reform”, in English and Arabic languages, which was developed during the course of discussions in 2019 with representatives of Jordan, Tunisia and other member States, UN agencies, and with inputs from regional and global experts. The framework is aligned with the SDGs, flexible and can be adapted to national specificities. 

Given this background, the SEM framework has been applied to Tunisia to compile data from the budgets since 2014 till latest years available. As the first stage of implementation of the SEM, national workshop with different ministries/entities of Tunisia would help improving the SEM in Tunisia national context, methodological issues relating to compilation of data, and it would be an opportunity to discuss preliminary analysis of the data, identify data gaps and solutions and discuss the course of action for moving to other stages of implementation of the SEM. 

In this context, ESCWA organized a regional workshop entitled “National Workshop on Social Expenditure Monitor of Tunisia: Mapping Data and Methodology”, which was virtually held on July 14-15-16, 2020. The aim of the meeting with representatives of Tunisia was to discuss the indicators of SEM in Tunisia context, data compilation methodology and preliminary analysis of SEM of Tunisia as well as identify data gaps and explore possible disaggregation of data sources/methods. The workshop was attended by representatives of several Tunisia’s governmental ministries and entities as well as the team working on the Social Expenditure Monitor from ESCWA. 

ESCWA’s project entitled Social Expenditure Monitor (SEM) is a pioneering tool for Arab States that provides a comprehensive mapping of public social expenditure to inform budgeting and social policy reforms. The establishment of SEM in a national context would require collection and analysis of data according to an agreed and adapted SEM framework

ESCWA has developed a framework on SEM titled “Social Expenditure Monitor for Arab States: A Tool to Support Budgeting and Fiscal Policy Reform”, in English and Arabic languages, which was developed during the course of discussions in 2019 with representatives of Jordan, Tunisia and other member States, UN agencies, and with inputs from regional and global experts. The framework is aligned with the SDGs, flexible and can be adapted to national specificities. 

Given this background, the SEM framework has been applied to Tunisia to compile data from the budgets since 2014 till latest years available. As the first stage of implementation of the SEM, national workshop with different ministries/entities of Tunisia would help improving the SEM in Tunisia national context, methodological issues relating to compilation of data, and it would be an opportunity to discuss preliminary analysis of the data, identify data gaps and solutions and discuss the course of action for moving to other stages of implementation of the SEM. 

In this context, ESCWA organized a regional workshop entitled “National Workshop on Social Expenditure Monitor of Tunisia: Mapping Data and Methodology”, which was virtually held on July 14-15-16, 2020. The aim of the meeting with representatives of Tunisia was to discuss the indicators of SEM in Tunisia context, data compilation methodology and preliminary analysis of SEM of Tunisia as well as identify data gaps and explore possible disaggregation of data sources/methods. The workshop was attended by representatives of several Tunisia’s governmental ministries and entities as well as the team working on the Social Expenditure Monitor from ESCWA. 

The SEM framework has been applied to Tunisia to compile data from the budgets since 2014 till 2020. As the first stage of implementation of the SEM, national workshop with different ministries/entities of Tunisia would help improving the SEM in Tunisia national context, methodological issues relating to compilation of data, and it would be an opportunity to discuss preliminary analysis of the data, identify data gaps and solutions and discuss the course of action for moving to other stages of implementation of the SEM.