Adopted in 2012, the Strategy Document of the Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation (COMCEC) is the first vision document for the COMCEC for six main cooperation areas including poverty. To achieve strategic objectives defined in the COMCEC Strategy, COMCEC Coordination Office launched the COMCEC Project Cycle Management (PCM) Programme in 2013. Carried out under the support of COMCEC PCM Programme and coordinated by SESRIC, the project titled “2014-SESRIC-016 Improving Statistical Capacities of OIC Member Countries in Poverty Statistics” aims at building statistical capacity in poverty statistics and overall contributing to the National Statistical Systems (NSS) of the member countries of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) through capacity building programs including short-term trainings.

Within the framework of 2014-SESRIC-016 Project, SESRIC organised the Training Course on ‘Poverty Statistics’ at the National Institute of Statistics and Economic and Demographic Studies (INSEED) in Lomé - Togolese Republic on 14-16 September 2014. The Course was conducted by Mr. Adjibou Oppa Barry, Expert at National Agency of Statistics and Demography (ANSD) of Senegal with the participation of relevant officials of INSEED of Togolese Republic.

As defined in the Classification of Statistical Activities (CSA Rev. 1 - October 2009), Poverty Statistics includes work on multidimensional methods to measure poverty. The subject area “Poverty Statistics’” is currently classified under the “Multi-domain statistics and indicators” activity of the “Environment and multi-domain statistics” domain.

The Course focused on the following topics:

• The concept of welfare and poverty
• Steps for measuring poverty
• Household surveys
• Measuring poverty: choosing a health indicator
• How to define a poverty line
• Problems choice of absolute poverty line
• Digital Index
• The index of poverty gap
• The poverty gap index ("depth of poverty") weighted
• Application with data from the ESPS 2 (STATA)
• The conceptual framework and the problem of poverty dynamics
• Methodological guidance and statistical tools to value
• Application with data from ESPS 1 and 2 (STATA and DAD)
• Analysis -Analysis results of the dynamics of poverty, sectoral breakdown of the change in poverty, breakdown of the change in the poverty-(effect growth vs. redistribution effect, etc.)

2014-SESRIC-016 Project “Improving Statistical Capacities of OIC Member Countries in Poverty Statistics” is funded by the COMCEC.