First Regionalized Social Accounting Matrix For Egypt A 2015 Nexus Project Social Accounting Matrix

The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) is pleased to present the first regionalized social accounting matrix (SAM) for Egypt. This SAM marks a major milestone in “localizing” development research and policy in Egypt and is expected to be most valuable for the development, implementation, and assessment of Egypt’s national and local development plans, like Egypt’s Sustainable Development Strategy 2030. In addition to standard SAMs, which combine many national datasets from institutions such as Central Banks, Ministries of Finance and Agriculture, and Statistical Bureaus, this regionalized SAM makes extensive use of sub-national level information such as the Economic Survey and Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIECS) produced by CAPMAS, regional GDP estimates by the Ministry of Planning, Monitoring and Administrative Reform, and the Agricultural Bulletins with information at the Governorate level produced by the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation. With this data it becomes possible to provide a detailed, socioeconomic status update for different regions within Egypt. As such, the disaggregated SAM allows for analyzing developmental issues at regional level and to better understand the potential impacts of policy changes at the local level.

A Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) is an accounting framework that gives a quantitative overview of the structure of the economy over a given time period. It records all transactions between economic agents, while respecting the principles of circularity of flows and balance between revenues and expenditures for each account. The level of disaggregation of accounts in the matrix varies according to the analyses to be undertaken and data availability. The accounts in a national SAM generally are production activities, commodities, institutions, and factors of production. For economic analyses and planning, a more detailed SAM is constructed. These involve disaggregation of activities, households, and factors of production from the more general national SAM. In such matrices, the national economy often will also be disaggregated into sub-national regions. Such SAMs provide rich datasets to help decision-makers in developing, designing, and evaluating regional economic and investment policies. As part of the technical cooperation within the (Arab) Agricultural Investment Development Analyzer (AIDA) project, which aims to develop tools for planning and evaluating investment projects in the agricultural sector, the Institut Tunisien de la Compétitivité et des Etudes Quantitatives (ITCEQ – the Tunisian Institute of Competitiveness and Quantitative Studies), in collaboration with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), have built a regionalized SAM of the Tunisian economy with detailed disaggregation at the sector, product, household, and regional levels. This SAM has been constructed using IFPRI's Nexus format, which uses common data standards, procedures, and classification systems for constructing and updating national SAMs. The regionalized SAM for Tunisia was built using national accounts statistics for the country, the Supply and Use Tables for 2015, which are produced by the National Institute of Statistics (NIS). The regionalized matrix is constructed in three steps – national, household, and regional. • The national 2015 SAM for Tunisia includes 46 sectors and 46 products. • For the household SAM, factors of production are split into 13 categories. Capital is disaggregated into four subcategories: crops, livestock, mining, and other. Land is a separate factor of production category. Labor is disaggregated into four education-level categories and across rural and urban areas. For the household SAM, household accounts are split into 15 categories by rural farm, rural nonfarm, and urban categories and then by national per capita expenditure quintiles. • For the regionalized SAM, sectoral production, production factors, and household groups are disaggregated into seven subnational regions: Greater Tunis, North East, North West, Center East, Center West, South East, and South West. The regional 2015 SAM in total has 105 household groups and is composed of 513 rows x 513 columns.

The purpose of this paper is used to document the different steps followed to construct the 2010/11 Social Accounting Matrix for Ethiopia. The SAM is an extension of the Standard Nexus Structure. It consists of 63 activity sectors, 67 commodity sectors, three types of factors of production: labor (rural and urban disaggregated by level of education), land, and capital (disaggregated by crops, livestock, mining and other sectors). The household sector is divided spatially into urban and rural households. Rural households are further disaggregated into households that earn crop and/or livestock incomes (i.e., farm households) and those that do no earn incomes from either source (i.e., nonfarm households). Households are further disaggregated into per capita expenditure quintiles. This SAM allows analyzing issues at the detailed level and to better understand the potential impacts of policy changes for both better off and more vulnerable households.

Highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, heat waves in Egypt are increasingly severe and frequent, raising the already high evaporation rate, accelerating crop transpiration, increasing soil aridity and elevating water requirements for both human and agricultural consumption in a country where water is imported. The forecasted spike in rainfall variability will affect flow of the Nile River, increasing both drought and high-flow years. While Egypt must produce more food for its rapidly growing population and confront high levels of child malnutrition, agricultural performance is slowing due to inefficient use of land, labour, water and energy along with environmental degradation and limited access to new technology, all of which favour increased incidence of pests and disease. Having tested climate smart agriculture (CSA) in four of Egypt’s most significant value chains – dairy, dates, maize and wheat – the authors demonstrate that CSA practices, technologies and policies will increase agricultural productivity and incomes, strengthen resilience to climate change and improve mitigation of its effects. These important, evidence-based findings have bearing well beyond Egypt’s borders. This publication is part of the Country Investment Highlights series under the FAO Investment Centre's Knowledge for Investment (K4I) programme.

This new Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Jordan is a snapshot representation of the Jordanian economy in which productive activities, factors of production, and economic transactions between the main agents, including households, government, and the rest of the world, are illustrated in a circular flow. It has been constructed using IFPRI's Nexus format, which uses common data standards, procedures, and classification systems for constructing and updating national SAMs. This new SAM for Jordan is expected to be an important dataset for the Arab (Agricultural) Investment for Development Analyzer (AIDA), which is tool based on computable general equilibrium (CGE) model analyses. AIDA was developed to inform national and regional development strategies by providing evidence on the impact of agricultural investments on economic development.

This note presents the results of an evaluation of public investment options for Egypt’s agri-food system. Nine agriculture-related public investments are considered, including targeting public spending to expand farm production, e.g., irrigation improvements, input subsidies, agricultural research, and extension, and to promote downstream agro-processing and marketing. The outcome indicators considered are economic (GDP) growth, incomes of the poor, job creation, and dietary diversity. IFPRI’s Rural Investment and Policy Analysis (RIAPA) economywide model is used for the evaluation because it captures linkages between sectors, households, and rural-urban economies and measures changes within and beyond the agri-food system. RIAPA is linked to the Agricultural Investment and Data Analysis (AIDA) module that tracks investment impacts and costs over time. The ranked results of the public investment options considered, summarized in the table here, can help prioritize agri-food system investments for post-COVID-19 recovery.

Most Egyptians receive food subsidies, which are the cornerstone of the country’s social protection system. The government recently attempted to reduce subsidies, with limited success, and introduced a cash transfer program targeting the poor. We use a dynamic general equilibrium model of the Egyptian economy to evaluate the growth and distributional impacts of subsidy reforms and cash transfers. We find that the welfare of poor households would be enhanced by a smaller, but better targeted food subsidy program, and that, if the cost savings from reforms are channeled into investment, faster economic growth would eventually outweigh any short-term welfare losses. However, most of the gains from subsidy reforms accrue to nonpoor households. Combining subsidy reforms with cash transfers leads to the largest welfare gains for the poor, while leaving the welfare of nonpoor households largely intact. The latter is crucial to maintaining support for ongoing subsidy reform efforts.

The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) is pleased to present an updated social accounting matrix (SAM) for Egypt. This SAM combines information from national datasets from many institutions, including the Central Bank, the Ministries of Finance and Agriculture, and various statistical bureaus. It also makes extensive use of data from the Economic Survey and Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIECS), which is produced by CAPMAS. With this data it becomes possible to provide a detailed update of the socioeconomic status of Egypt. The SAM also allows for more timely analysis of developmental issues and a better understanding the potential economic impacts of policy changes. The SAM is the main dataset used for economywide modelling of policy scenarios and simulations. Such modeling has proven to be a powerful evidence-based analytical tool for informing policy making and for assessing the impact of different policy interventions, especially during the COVID-19 crisis.