In accordance with its 2016 Annual Work Plan and within the framework of Statistical Capacity Building (StatCaB) Programme, SESRIC organised the Training Course on ‘Social Accounting Matrixes’ at Central Informatics Organization, Information and eGovernment Authority (IGA) of Bahrain on 25-27 April 2016.

The Training Course was conducted by Ms. Ait Khelalou Yattao, Director of National Accounts at the Department of Statistics of Kingdom of Morocco with the participation of relevant officials of the IGA.

As defined in the Classification of Statistical Activities (CSA Rev. 1 - October 2009); http://goo.gl/olg3Tz Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) - includes flows of all economic transactions that take place within an economy (regional or national). It is at the core, a matrix representation of the National Accounts for a given country, but can be extended to include non-national accounting flows, and created for whole regions or areas. SAMs refer to a single year providing a static picture (or snapshot) of the economy.

The course included discussion activities and covered the following topics:

• The definition of social accounting matrix
• The structure of the standard social accounting matrix
• Resources and uses of tables
• Integration of Economic Accounts Table
• Advantages of social accounting matrix

Sign up for an account at OIC-StatCom Forum (http://forum.sesric.org/) to join the group discussion on the Training Course on 'Labour Statistics' in Sultanate of Oman available at: http://forum.sesric.org/?p=623