The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), the Ministry of Planning and the International Cooperation in Jordan and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) jointly launched on 21 November in Amman a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model for Jordan to analyse the impact of economic policies on determining investment priorities in Jordan, in the presence of the Minister Nasser Shraideh, ESCWA Executive Secretary Rola Dashti and UNICEF Representative in Jordan Tanya Chapuisat.
Shraideh commended the ongoing support of both ESCWA and UNICEF to Jordan in various economic and social fields, and stressed the importance of the model to enable policymakers outline the positive and negative impacts of any foreseen decisions and help them adopt the most adequate economic policies.
“We are pleased that Jordan is the first country among ESCWA member States to develop this new generation of smart economic models, which will allow decision-makers to implement economic and social policies in an immediate and interactive manner,” Dashti underscored. "This reflects the unprecedented level of cooperation between ESCWA and the Kingdom to support the efforts exerted to establish an appropriate environment that generates growth and create job opportunities for young people,” she added.
For her part, Chapuisat emphasized that this joint project with ESCWA is an extension to the longstanding cooperation with the Ministry in many development aspects. She stressed the importance of designing such tools for economic modelling that serve evidence-based policymaking and evaluate the impact of such policies on economy and social aspects such as families, children and the most vulnerable groups.
The CGE model is a standard and vital tool for policymaking used to evaluate the implications that policy reforms have on a country’s economy through simulating scenarios and providing results at the macro-economic level.
On 21 October, ESCWA had signed an agreement in Amman to technically support the Department of Statistics (DoS) in Jordan in improving the national accounts mechanism to strengthen the country's statistical infrastructure.
