QEM Recent Issues

This publication constitutes one of the mainstay activities of MAS, since its inception. Since 2005, the Monitor has moved from an annual to a quarterly basis. It includes the following:

• Figures and analysis on developments in the Palestinian economy on a quarterly basis.
• Changes in the most prominent economic/social indicators in the economic sphere.
• Theoretical and practical issues that directly affect the economic climate/policy in Palestine.
• Raising public awareness levels, as well as enhancing levels of dialogue on economic policies.

The Monitor’s objectives:

• To improve the ability of decision-makers across various sectors to respond to needs, interact with changes, and increase the effectiveness of their interventions in the overall development process.
• A Monitor is an informational-analytical tool, providing an honest account of statistics pertaining to product information. It outlines significant changes that occur in the social and economic fields, helping decision-makers to determine necessary political options and interventions.
• The Monitor contributes to building local institutional capacities that are capable of monitoring economic and social developments while looking to the future.

Historical background:

• The Economic and Social Monitoring Unit was established in 1996 (i.e. two years after the establishment of MAS), in response to decision-makers' need for an analytical reference point that kept pace with periodic social and economic changes in the Palestinian arena.
• Since its establishment and until 2005, the Economic and Social Monitoring Unit published two issues of the Economic and Social Monitor annually.
• Since 2005, in light of the increasing pace of change in economic/development realities in the Palestinian territories on the one hand, and the development of Palestinian capabilities in collecting and analyzing information, on the other hand, a switch was made to prepare quarterly reports on the Palestinian economy. The objective here was to reduce the time between the availability of statistics and economic analyses, making them available to concerned authorities on a quarterly basis in order to improve the economic policy environment and increase its effectiveness.
• Since 2008, MAS commenced providing the analysis of specific topics within text boxes, independent of the Monitor’s narrative, in order to attract attention to topics that have theoretical or practical importance at the local, regional or global levels (during the time period of that issue).
• Since 2008, the Monitor contains an independent bank of economic concepts and definitions. A collection of these was published in a reference book in 2020 (link).
•  As of 2011, the annual Q4 issue includes an annual report as well as a quarterly one. The first part of the report includes an analysis of changes in Q4. The second part of the report is concerned with the analysis of annual changes. This includes an analysis of changes in the indicators of economic and developmental reality in the Palestinian territories during that year compared to previous years. It also summarizes the most prominent international and regional economic developments.
• In 2020, new sections were added to the Monitor and others reframed. These changes reflected shifts in the Palestinian development scene during the past decade, culminating in the crises caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.