Microsimulation of agricultural policies in Zambia

UNU-WIDER together with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) organizes a validation webinar for stakeholders on the microsimulation of agricultural policies in Zambia. The webinar aims to introduce the use of MicroZAMOD, the tax-benefit microsimulation tool for Zambia; illustrate distributions and poverty impacts of Zambian agricultural policies; and present results of experimental simulations.

In the collaborative project between UNU-WIDER and FAO the agricultural policies under assessment included the Farmer Input Subsidy Programme (FISP), the Food Security pack (FSP) and the Food Reserve Agency purchase programme (FRA). The MicroZAMOD model has been used for exploring the incidence and joint impact of these policies across the welfare distribution, their impacts on poverty and income inequality as well as for experimental policy simulations, such as:

• Better targeting of FISP to poorer farmers and to those residing in areas not well served by private farming input providers, and the use of saved resources to expand FSP
• FRA maize purchase programme replaced by direct transfers
• Joint distributional impacts of greater transfers financed by increased in direct taxation

The event is aimed for the relevant stakeholders, which include other UN agencies, local ministries and research institutes. The study is presented by Jukka Pirttilä (UNU-WIDER) and the event chair is Mari Kangasniemi (Social Protection Officer, FAO).

This event is part of the SOUTHMOD - simulating tax and benefit policies for development  project. SOUTHMOD project is part of UNU-WIDER's research and capacity building programme on domestic revenue mobilization (DRM), funded by the Norwegian Agency for Development Co-operation (Norad).