Logistics

 

Agenda

 

Participants

 

Training material

 

Presentations

“Assessing Development Strategies to Achieve the MDGs in Asia” is a project aimed at evaluating and recommending various strategic options that would ensure the timely achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in a select number of Asian countries. Empirical investigations of MDG costing and financing are planned, using Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) modelling as the anchoring methodology. A combination of the latter with methods at the micro level is expected to enable proper analysis of the determinants of MDG achievement, on the one hand, and the effect of achieving goals in education, health, and water and sanitation on poverty and income inequality, on the other. The project is currently being implemented in the following countries: Indonesia, the Philippines, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.

To initiate the project's activities, an inception and first training workshop was held on 20-22 August, 2008 in Bangkok, Thailand. This first workshop was organized by the Development Policy and Analysis Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA/DPAD), the UNDP Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific (UNDP/RBAP) and the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP) in close collaboration with the UNDP Regional Centre in Colombo (RCC). For more details on this workshop click here:

The Second Training Workshop is being organized for 24-27 March, 2009, by UN-DESA/DPAD and the UNDP Country Office in the Philippines. The workshop will be held at the premises of the Dusit Thani Hotel in Manila.

The main objectives of the workshop are to:

• take stock of advancements in the work of the national expert teams, especially on the write up of the country narrative and the construction/update/adaptation of the Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for use with the “Maquette for MDG Simulations” (MAMS);
• discuss progress and problems encountered in the work on the SAM, with a focus on solutions to commonly encountered problems;
• present and discuss additional data requirements for a full calibration of MAMS, including an outlook on the microeconometric estimations and other steps required for the MDG module of the model;
• train participants further in the hands-on use of MAMS in GAMS and a linked Excel interface; and
• present and discuss simulation results using a sample application of MAMS.