The ‘What’s new’ section is designed to:
- Shed light on the continual ‘behind-the-scenes’ work that goes into improving our macroeconomic research and analysis. This might include improvements to our data collection processes, changes to our forecast methodologies, etc.
- Enable our long-standing partners to easily identify any changes and understand why things have changed.
- Allow us to flag-up significant changes.
A key quarter to end a crucial year
The year 2019 has been a game-changing time for Algeria. As well as quarterly data, in our Q4 edition of the report, we look at full-year figures for a number of macroeconomic indicators and assess the impact of the year’s events on the country’s economic prospects.
The final details of Algeria’s Budget Bill for 2020 were confirmed at the end of the quarter. To help our readers navigate these key changes, we’ve expanded our featured ‘Deep Dive’ boxes on these issues to assess how this alters the business landscape and how it impacts our growth forecasts amongst other indicators.
The fourth quarter also saw the election of a new President and the passing of the long-awaited Hydrocarbons Law, both of which are set to have a significant impact on Algeria’s short- and long-term future. In this edition, we analyse the impact of both developments in detail.
Improvements behind the scenes
As we do every quarter, we have updated our macroeconomic models with all of the new and pertinent data we have collected from a range of local and international sources since our last publication.
As we do every quarter, we have updated our macroeconomic models with all of the new and pertinent data we have collected from a range of local and international sources since our last publication.
This quarter, we also created an entirely new set of databases to cover the oil and gas industry. We now track everything from exploration to exports via production, transport and consumption, which gives us a truly comprehensive picture of the industry’s inner workings. Given the significance of this sector for the Algerian economy, this has reinforced our visibility of the economy as a whole and bolstered our confidence in our forecasts for the future.
In other database changes, we removed hospital and clinic construction projects from our large infrastructure database and created a dedicated tracking tool just for them. This change was based on the specific requirements of our partners in the healthcare segment and allows us to input industry-specific data such as the number of news beds or the medical specialties of new institutions.
We refined and streamlined our data collection processes so we spend less time collecting information, which frees up more time for valued-added analysis. We have also continued to strengthen our ongoing monitoring to ensure that we never miss a key data publication and avoid gaps in our models.
Finally, we also grew our team of Algiers-based analysts in the fourth quarter of 2019. The addition of a new team member expanded our data-capture capabilities and gave us greater flexibility to allocate skills to where they are needed.
Adapting to the new data context
Since early 2019, a number of official periodic statistical publications have undergone changes in the frequency and regularity with which they are published. This includes information from the Central Bank and Customs Authorities. In response, we have adapted our data collection techniques to capture a wider range of information from a more diverse selection of sources.
Click here to find out more about our 'Algeria | Macroeconomic report Q4 2019'.