UN-DESA • UNDP Honduras • Central Bank of Honduras

Training workshop
Tegucigalpa, Honduras
3–5 and 11–12 December 2012

In the continuous effort to develop capacities of the government experts of Honduras, DPAD has held consultations and training on building datasets and on the use of modelling tools, both of which are an integral part of developing the country's capacity to analyze its national policies in the context of achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

On 3-5 December, an expert from DPAD provided direct consultations with the expert team from the Central Bank of Honduras (CBH) to assist in building a Social Accounting Matrix. The meetings were the latest in an ongoing process to transfer the knowledge to the staff of the CBH on building the dataset required by the economy-wide model that tracks the MDG indicators for Honduras.

On 11-12 December, an expert from DPAD conducted a training workshop on the use of the Stata statistical software to estimate social, economic, and political determinants of achieving the Millennium Development Goals and for use in microsimulations. The goals of the workshop were to strengthen the capabilities of government staff to use large datasets and apply statistical techniques to estimate inputs needed for the subsequent phases of the project. The 2-day workshop was attended by 15 members of the Inter-institutional Technical Unit (ITU)—a national technical team that includes members of the Central Bank, the National Institute of Statistics and various Secretariats (Finance, Planning, Education, Health and Agriculture), as well as UNDP-Honduras.

During the workshop DPAD:

• Introduced the Stata software tool and its use in estimating MDG determinants;
• Introduce the ITU to the basic command structure and syntax;
• Showed the ITU how to manage datasets in STATA, how to work with variables, generate statistics and tables, and run estimations;
• Provided practical exercises on the use of Stata to estimate MDG determinants for Honduras.

The activities are the latest in a series of training events under the project "Strengthening Macroeconomic and Social Policy Coherence through Integrated Macro-Micro Modelling", conducted by DPAD, in close collaboration with UNDP's Office in Honduras and the Government of Honduras. An introduction to the modelling tools and techniques was held in Tegucigalpa on 10-13 July, 2012.