Second GHAMOD retreat

In collaboration with the national GHAMOD team and Institute for Statistics, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) at the University of Ghana UNU-WIDER organizes a 5-day GHAMOD training event, a capacity development initiative allowing participants to get acquainted with the GHAMOD tax-benefit model and to produce policy notes based on the model. The policy notes serve to answer the questions that are most relevant for the work of the participants.

The main goal of the retreat is to empower participants to use GHAMOD to answer their own policy questions using the model, aware of the capabilities and limitations of GHAMOD; and provide a forum for GHAMOD users to exchange and learn. A key feature is that the National Team is taking the lead in organizing and delivering the retreat to ensure maximum ownership. 

At the same time, the retreat shall serve as a forum to build a community of GHAMOD users in Ghana, creating ownership of the model beyond ISSER, and in the long-term, establishing GHAMOD versed counterparts in stakeholder institutions such as Ministries that administer policies modelled in GHAMOD.

In addition to ISSER, participants include government officials in stakeholder institutions such as the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MoFEP), Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), University of Ghana, the Ministry of Gender and Social Protection and the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS). The chosen participants are those interested in country-level tax benefit policies that greatly improve household welfare.

About GHAMOD

GHAMOD, the tax-benefit microsimulation model for Ghana, is a highly versatile yet easy to use tool for policymakers and researchers alike. It allows the user to analyse and compare the effects of different benefit policy scenarios on poverty, inequality, and government revenues. The model applies user-defined tax and benefit policy rules to micro-data on individuals and households and calculates the effects of these rules on household income.

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