Dalia Elsabbagh and Mariam Raouf
January 26, 2020
Building on the continuous collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation (MALR) in Egypt, IFPRI has been working with a group of researchers, from Cairo University, to provide 10 weekly online training sessions on Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Modeling during the period from December 5th, 2019 to January 23rd, 2020. This course covered the main economic theories that underlie CGE models, as well as running many relevant policy simulations on issues such as: foreign capital inflows, changes in terms of trade, increases in the efficiency of the economic activities, introducing new taxes, changes in the transaction costs. Participants also learned how to interpret the results of simulations, as they discussed interactively the likely impacts of these policy changes on the macro and sectoral levels as well as on the welfare of the different household groups. These online sessions were taught by Dr. Manfred Wiebelt, Senior Research Fellow at The Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany.
The CGE training was followed by a closing workshop which was held at Hotel Conrad in Cairo on January 26th. In his opening remarks, Clemens Breisinger, Country Program Leader, highlighted that IFPRI has collaborated with the Egyptian Government, mainly through the cooperation with the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), to build the first regional Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Egypt for the year 2015. IFPRI has also worked with the Ministry of Planning to evaluate the distributional impact of the recent reform policies, such as the removal of the fuel subsidy and the devaluation of the Egyptian pound, using the CGE modelling as a powerful evidence-based tool in assessing the economy-wide effects of such policies. In addition, IFPRI is currently working with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to update the 2030 Vision of the Agriculture sector, by setting the top investment priorities, through applying the AIDA model, which is a CGE-based investment tool that helps in prioritizing investments in the Agriculture sector, going beyond the farming activities, by including the whole of the values chain along the agri-food system.
Dr. Gihan El Menoufi, the former Director of the Extension Sector Department at the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, highlighted the new vision of the Ministry which aims at restructuring the extension sector department at the Ministry as well as upgrading the skills of the extension officers to support the new agriculture mega projects, such as the expansion of the greenhouses and the possible transformation towards providing digital extension services to farmers. The Ministry is also keen to strengthen the partnerships with international organizations by making use of the evidence-based tools and advanced modelling techniques, such as IFPRI’s CGE model, to evaluate the impact of the newly suggested policies as well as formulate a clear agriculture strategy. Dr. Khaled Abdo, Director of the Center of Agricultural Economic Studies at Cairo University’s Faculty of Agriculture, stressed the importance of capacity building trainings at both the Faculty of Agriculture and the Ministry of Agriculture to develop staff abilities in using the advanced modelling techniques that aim to support the decision making process and help in drawing the most relevant agricultural policies. Finally, Dr. Victor Fares, Assistant Professor at Cairo University, gave a briefing on the main lessons and knowledge learned from the CGE Online Course.
Afterwards, Dr. Wiebelt showed how to implement and run simulations, , and then interpreting and discussing the results. The participants were engaged in an interactive discussion to interpret the results, focusing on major transmission mechanisms and how these affect macro aggregates, the sectoral value added and the household welfare. This was done by tracking the changes in both relative prices and factor remuneration.
At the end of the workshop, participants from the Ministry of Agriculture and Cairo University showed interest in enhancing further institutionalized collaboration with IFPRI on such capacity building trainings, by establishing a new taskforce at the Ministry’s premises aiming to support the decision making process using the economy-wide modelling as an evidence-based tool for planning and for setting investment prioritization.
