ECA’s Vera Songwe to take part in high level debate on informality in New York

Abstract

The Economic Commission for Africa will organize, in partnership with the Egyptian Ministry of Planning, Monitoring and Administrative Reform, the African Union, the Economic Commission for Western Asia and the Permanent Mission of South Africa to the United Nations a High level debate on “Informal Sector and 2030 Agenda” on Tuesday 16 July in New York, on the margins of the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. Participants will study issues related to the informal economy in African and Arab countries, potential development benefits of a reduced informal sector and existing options for countries to reduce and better control the size of their informal economies. More than 61 percent of the world’s working population are employed in the informal sector (ILO). In Africa and Arab countries, the informal sector employs 85.8 and 68.6 of workers. According to ECA estimates however, African countries lose up to 4.6 percent of their GDP to its informal sectors.