Abuja, Nigeria, March 14, 2021
The Macroeconomic Policy Department of the ECOWAS Commission held a preparatory meet-ing with ITF Enhancing Human Security (ITF) team to discuss the development of fiscal fore-casting model for ECOWAS and its Member States. The purpose of the model is to support forecasting of fiscal revenues and expenditures, and to ensure convergence to medium-term fiscal targets (fiscal balance and debt) with a purpose of achieving long-term sustainable fiscal position.

MST model incorporates concepts, methodology and topics, which were covered during the training of Macroeconomic Fiscal Modelling for Research and Statistics Unit of Macroeconomic Policy Department in 2019-20 implemented by the ITF and jointly funded by Slovenian Devel-opment Cooperation and ECOWAS Commission.

The model is necessary to strengthen ECOWAS Macroeconomic Policy Department – RSU ca-pacity to transfer gained knowledge, methodologies and tools and support Member States in developing and managing comprehensive and sustainable fiscal framework models.

In so doing this ongoing cooperation addresses the goal stipulated in the MoU between the ECOWAS Commission and the Slovenian Government to strengthen the capacity of the Macro-economic Policy Department – Research and Statistics Unit (RSU), to assist ECOWAS Member States in having a better control of mobilization of their domestic resources and mitigate mac-roeconomic fiscal imbalances due to unplanned events (i. e. COVID-19 pandemic).

The model is designed for practical use in institutions, responsible for current fiscal forecasting and long-term sustainable fiscal position on national or regional level.