March 17-28, 2025

From March 17 to 28, 2025, the course on Macroeconometric Forecasting and Analysis, jointly organized by the CICDC and the National Bureau of Statistics, took place in Shenzhen. 30 participants joined the course, including officials from the National Bureau of Statistics, General Administration of Customs, People’s Bank of China, as well as agencies in Bolivia, Cambodia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Lao PDR, Mongolia, Nepal, Nigeria, Republic of Serbia, Suriname, and Zimbabwe.

The course was presented by the IMF Institute for Capacity Development (ICD) and delivered by Mr. Diego Rodriguez-Guzman, Mr. Franz Hamann, and Mr. Hui He, Director of CICDC. Through the course, government officials gained a rigorous foundation in the estimation of macro-econometric models and their application for nowcasting, forecasting, and policy analysis in central banks, ministries, and public research institutions. Officials were trained on autoregressive integrated moving average models (ARIMA), non-stationarity and unit-roots, vector autoregressive models (VAR), structural VAR (SVAR), vector error correction models (VECM), dynamic factor models (DFM), and forecast evaluation/combination. Through hands-on practice, participants also used data on Asian countries (e.g., India and Mongolia) to recreate the challenges and constraints faced in their work.

During the workshop, experts and participants visited Tencent on a field trip, during which they learned about the recent development of financial technology and services in China. The course was highly rated by the participants.