Cameroon and Senegal join the OECD Supply and Use databases

Traditionally, Supply and Use Tables (SUTs) have been used to improve Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimates by balancing the supply and demand of goods and services within the national accounts. In recent years, SUTs have also become the key accounting tool for generating national Input-Output Tables, which describe sale and purchase relationships between producers and consumers within an economy.

Input-Output Tables are a key ingredient for estimating Trade in Value Added (TiVA), which attributes the value added from the production of goods and services to each country in the value chain. TiVA complements traditional measures of trade by estimating the domestic and foreign origins of the value added contained in exports. TiVA indicators help policy makers to understand the trade flows taking place within supply chains and the involvement of their economies in global value chains.

In 2020, three international organisations, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the OECD and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) launched a capacity-building project in Africa to develop the production of national statistics for the Inter-Country Input-Output (ICIO) tables that underlie TiVA indicators. The aim of the project was to address under-coverage of African economies in the TiVA database.

As part of the capacity building, online training sessions explained the construction of the ICIO tables and their use in compiling the TiVA indicators. The training also covered the national statistical requirements for the ICIO tables. More than 300 participants from 48 African countries and eight partner agencies participated.

Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Nigeria and Senegal were selected to participate in the pilot project. The selection of countries was based on expression of interest from the national authorities and statistical criteria such as the availability of data, frequency of updates, industry coverage, the version of the international accounting standards and classifications used in the ICIO tables, and whether there is an historical time series.

Over the past two years, the project team – composed of the three international organisations, a SUT expert consultant and the pilot countries – has worked hard to assess the data available to compile the SUTs and its suitability for the ICIO tables.

Cameroon’s and Senegal’s detailed SUTs now meet the OECD requirements for data quality, so they have been added to the OECD's SUT database which now covers 57 countries. In addition, some key annual national accounts estimates such as GDP have been published for Cameroon and Senegal. This means that OECD statisticians and economists, as well as external users such as policy analysts and researchers, can now incorporate these countries into their analyses. Other countries participating in the Africa-TiVA project will be included in these databases once they meet the OECD’s data quality criteria.

Cameroon has a diverse economy. Although agriculture is relatively important, it accounted for less than one-fifth of the country’s total value added in 2019. Manufacturing (mainly manufacturing of food products, textiles and wood) accounted for 14%, construction 6%, and mining and quarrying (mainly crude oil and gas) 4%. Services accounted for more than half of the country’s total value added in 2019; they included wholesale and retail trade and repair of motor vehicles (12% of value added), transportation and storage (11%), accommodation and food services activities (6%), public administration and defence (6%), real estate activities (5%) and education (4%).

The biggest contributor to Cameroon’s exports in 2019 was mining and quarrying (mainly crude oil), which represented 33% of the total value of exports (excluding purchases by tourists). Between 2010 and 2019, the share of this activity in Cameroon’s exports rose from 25% to 33%, despite a fall in oil prices (both in US dollars and in national currency).

Agriculture and manufacturing (mainly of food and wood products) also make an important contribution to Cameroon’s exports (excluding purchases by tourists), although their shares fell between 2010 and 2019. In 2019, manufactured products represented 22% of exports, agricultural products accounted for 18% and services for 27%. The main services exports were transportation and storage services, administrative and support services, and accommodation and food services.

In 2019, manufacturing (mainly of food products) and agriculture each accounted for 17% of Senegal’s value added. Services accounted for 57% of value added and included wholesale and retail sale and repair of motor vehicles (15%), real estate activities (8%), public administration and defence (6%), education (5%) and transportation and storage (4%). Mining and quarrying (mainly metal ores) accounted for 4% of value added.

In 2019, manufactured products accounted for 57% of Senegal’s exports (excluding purchases by tourists). These were mainly food products (in particular processed fishery products), petroleum products, fertiliser and phosphoric acid. Products from mining and quarrying (mainly gold) accounted for 18% of export revenue (excluding purchases by tourists) in 2019 – a sharp increase compared with 2010, when they accounted for 10%. This increase was due to both higher gold production and higher prices (in both US dollar and national currency terms), as well as an increase in the production of strong and corrosion-resistant metals such as zirconium and titanium used as alloys in a wide range of industries. Services accounted for 15% of Senegal’s exports (excluding purchases by tourists) in 2019, and included professional, scientific and technical services, information and communication services, and transportation and storage services.