The Haut Commissariat au Plan (HCP) of Morocco and the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) have signed on January 8th in Rabat a Memorandum of Understanding aimed at consolidating bilateral cooperation between the two institutions in the field of statistics.
The cooperation between these two Mediterranean partners will cover key aspects in the design and implementation of the statistical production cycle. Under the umbrella of the memorandum, Morocco will have the opportunity of exchanging experiences and best practices with Italian colleagues in a number of relevant domains, including income, expenditure and consumption, and to apply them to the design of its own statistical programs.
The World Bank has had a pivotal role in facilitating this partnership, through the collaboration of the Poverty Global Practice and the Rome Center for Development Data (C4D2) in providing training and technical assistance during the initial phases of the survey design and data collection.
The World Bank plans to support Morocco also by strengthening its national statistical systems and enhancing its capacity to produce regularly household-level data to be used to obtain a more accurate picture of the ongoing socio-economic changes and inequalities in the country, thus broadening the scope of welfare analysis.
Signature of the Memorandum of Understanding between HCP and ISTAT in Rabat / Photo credits: HCP and MAP