Rwanda: Technical Assistance Report-Expanding the Nowcasting Toolbox at the National Bank of Rwanda

In response to a request from the National Bank of Rwanda and in accordance with the AFE workplan, a virtual technical assistance (TA) mission on Forecasting and Policy Analysis System (FPAS) took place during December 12–21, 2022. The objectives of the mission were twofold: (i) to further strengthen the nowcasting framework for GDP and CPI inflation, and (ii) to initiate the work on developing a simple, efficient, and robust process for forecasting the external variables for the Quarterly Projection Model (QPM). The new CPI nowcasting system now includes the monthly forecasts of ten subgroups of the core CPI inflation, as well as two subgroups of food inflation, enabling the assessment of the key drivers of inflation and the nature of inflation shocks. Similarly, the new GDP nowcasting system covers production in different sectors and significantly improves the forecasting results.