Overview

The West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) was created by Treaty in January 1994 by the Heads of States of seven West African countries using the common currency, CFA franc, namely Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo. In May 1997, Guinea-Bissau became the eighth member of the Union.

The main objectives of the UEMOA are to:

• strengthen the competitiveness of economic and financial activities of member states in the framework of an open and competitive market and a harmonised legal environment;
• ensure the convergence of economic performance and policies of member states by the establishment of a multilateral monitoring system;
• create a common market for member states based on the free mobility of persons, goods, services, and capital, and on the right of setting up a business as well as on a common external tariff and trade policy;
• ensure national, sector policy coordination by implementing common actions, and, eventually, common policies, namely in the areas of: human resources, land use planning, agriculture, energy, industry, mining, transport, infrastructure and telecommunication;
• harmonise, to the extent necessary, a good functioning of the common market, the legislation of member states and, particularly, their tax system.

The specialised institutions of UEMOA are the BCEAO and the BOAD.

Statistical Activities

As part of its 2006 – 2010 proposals for regional integration UEMOA is financing a programme of enhancement of the regional statistical system. This new programme will allow (i) to improve, harmonise and modernise regional statistical production; (ii) to implement and operationalise the institutional arrangements for follow-up in each domain (iii) to reinforce the institutional and technical capacities of the UEMOA Commission in the field of statistics. The actions to be implemented in the framework of this horizontal statistical programme are organised on 4 axes: (i) Reinforcement of policy convergences; (ii) Poverty and social cohesion (Follow-up of regional PRSP and MDG’s) ; (iii) Common market establishment and (iv) Institutional support.

This covers:

• adoption of a Harmonised Consumption Price Index (HCPI);
• publication of a regional consumption price index in the form of monthly and biannual notes;
• production and publication of biannual reports on the implementation of the multilateral monitoring system;
• adoption of methodologies for calculating the Gross Domestic Product (GDP);
• creation of a data base on competitivity
• harmonisation of sectoral, social and environmental statistics;
• creation of a regional business register;
• promotion of gender statistics and governance.

A Regional Statistical Centre is implemented since the beginning of the month of October 2010. It centralizes the statistical activities of the UEMOA Commission and its  role is  primarily to contribute to the improvement of the quality of the statistical production at the regional level.

Received October 2010