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Advanced Trade Analysis Course

Start: 
19 Feb 2007 - 02:00
End: 
21 Feb 2007 - 02:00
Venue: 
Trade & Industrial Policy Strategies (TIPS), 814 Church Street, Arcadia, Pretoria, South Africa

[Please note: Registration for this course is now closed.]

SADC member states are currently engaged in complex EPA negotiations with the European Union whilst SACU members have a challenging schedule of bilateral negotiations with the US, India and China. Moreover, although WTO negotiations are currently stalled, moves are afoot to revive these negotiations in the course of 2007.


The demand for quantitative trade analysis focused on southern Africa is therefore expected to remain high, at least in the medium term. Undertaking these analyses with a high degree of accuracy and reliability is as important as ensuring that impact assessments are available before agreements are signed.

Impact assessments are essential to understand the likely outcomes and consequences of multiple complex negotiations so that negative consequences may be mitigated and positive externalities harnessed.

As part of TIPS’ commitment to building analytical capacity in southern Africa, we will once again be offering an Advanced Trade Analysis Course that is aimed at equipping trade analysts with the economic grounding and spreadsheet knowledge that they need to carry out such research.  Researchers will learn about relevant sources of data, as well as basic techniques to manipulate the data into a useable format.

The course will be based mainly on Excel spreadsheets, using real SADC trade and tariff data from TIPS’ SADC Trade Database, and is of a highly practical nature. The course organisers will attempt to base the examples in the course on the participants’ countries of origin so as to make the course as relevant as possible. Each new concept will be introduced through lectures, followed by hands-on data manipulation using actual trade data.

The course will be presented by trade economists from TIPS.

Contact: 
For more information, please contact Mmatlou Kalaba at e-mail: mmatlou@tips.org.za, tel: +27 12 431 7900 or fax: +27 12 431 7910