7th Regional Workshop on the International Comparison Program in Western Asia
December 12-15, 2006, Beirut - Lebanon

The objective of the 7th ICP Workshop was to bring together the ICP national teams with the ICP regional office and the World Bank to review preliminary estimates of Consumption PPPs for 2005 and agree on all data inputs used for its calculation.

The meeting was set out to achieve the following goals as per the agenda attached as Annex I:

1. to discuss the overall regional and global achievements of the program-plan since the last meeting at the sixth workshop in April 2006;

2. to finalize Health and Education data for the first and second quarters of 2006;

3. to discuss the final estimates of basic heading weights submitted to the Regional Office;

4. to review preliminary results of the Consumption National Annual Price Averages for 2005 (weighted and unweighted);

5. to review the first PPP results produced from the current preliminary data;

6. to review the housing questionnaires sent by member countries;

7. to answer any queries regarding the new data collection module used for non-consumption groups, ICPDCF;

8. to discuss the current status of construction, equipment and compensation groups recently collected;

9. to agree on a time plan for the remaining current round of the ICP.

• Agenda

• List of participants

• Photos

• Meeting Report

• Papers presented:
  
  Global Status Report
  Mr. Yonas Biru, Deputy Global Manager, ICP, World Bank
  
  Regional Progress Report
  Mr. Tarik Alami, ICP Regional Coordinator for Western Asia, ESCWA
  
  Weighted and Unweighted Annual Averages - Data needed, Computation method and data Presentation
  Ms. Nada Hamadeh, Consultant, ICP, World Bank
  Mr. Majed Skaini, Economics Associate, ICP, ESCWA
  Ms. Farah Nsouly, Statistics Assistant, ICP, ESCWA
  
  Nonconsumption data validation reports
  Mr. Yonas Biru, Deputy Global Manager, ICP, World Bank
  Mr. Majed Skaini, Economics Associate, ICP, ESCWA