Introduction and background
These terms of reference outline the scope of work and reporting arrangements for a local term appointment as an economic analyst with the World Bank’s Indonesia Poverty Reduction and Economic Management unit (EASPI) in Jakarta.  The unit in Jakarta is responsible for macroeconomic monitoring, analysis, forecasting of the Indonesian economy, for working with the Government of Indonesia to improve analysis and build capacity, and for providing, as requested, analytical support to senior government counterparts. The unit is also responsible for regular reporting and briefings on the Indonesian economy including formal publications (currently twice yearly), and informal briefings to a variety of public- and private-sector domestic and international counterparts. In addition, the unit provides regular monitoring and analysis of macroeconomic developments for the World Bank’s management, for external publications and as inputs to lending operations, especially program loans.

The PREM unit in Jakarta is upgrading its economic monitoring, modeling, capacity-building and dissemination activities. These Terms of Reference outline the contributions expected of an Economic Analyst under a locally recruited term appointment who will play an integral role in this work in support of the Lead and Senior Economists. responsible for building up and systematically maintaining the core economic databases, improving the quality of just-in-time reporting and presentation of key economic series, modeling and analysis as well as the dissemination of these and related economic work of the Jakarta Bank office.

Note: If the selected candidate is a current Bank Group staff member with a Regular or Open-Ended appointment, s/he will retain his/her Regular or Open-Ended appointment. All others will be offered a 2 year renewable term appointment.  Note:  A potential candidate has been identified and intends to apply for this position.  However, this remains a competitive process and interested candidates are encouraged to apply.

He or she will be responsible for the following tasks:

• Building up and maintaining the core economic databases needed for ongoing monitoring of the Indonesian economy and for carrying out macroeconomic forecasting and fiscal policy analysis. The analyst will do this by:
• Coordinating the improvement of the PREM unit’s economic monitoring data base by developing and refining standardized spreadsheets and templates for maintaining and presenting key economic variables
• Updating, managing and extracting data from key  macroeconomic databases such as National accounts (BPS), BOP, monetary and banking indicators (BI) and CEIC International macroeconomic dataset
• Updating, managing and extracting relevant microeconomic data from Sakernas, Susenas, SUSI and Statistik Industri, PODES, BPS, GDS, Population Census (BPS),
• Systematically keeping track of both aggregated and detailed central government budget (APBN) information from MoF
• Improving the WBOJ economics team’s understanding of selected economic indicators by interacting with personnel from key data producing agencies, collecting detailed information on series construction and systematically documenting this information

b) Contributing to the fulfillment, in a timely and accurate fashion, of the various mandatory reporting requirements and mandatory contributions to the World Bank’s global databases such as:

• Updating and maintaining the Indonesia data on the World Bank’s global LDB
• Preparing or contributing to the preparation of drafts of monthly reports to the STRMG
• Verifying and reconciling the data on Indonesia that appear in various World Bank global databases
• Updating and maintaining the historical data needed for the RMSM-X model

c) Contributing to the economic reporting, briefing and dissemination activities of the WBOJ economics team by:

• Preparing or contributing to the preparation of regular briefing notes following major data or information releases such as quarterly trade statistics, GDP numbers and central government budgets
• Preparing or contributing to the preparation of briefing notes on selected economic topics on an ad-hoc or as-needed basis
• Preparing presentations and presenting summaries of recent developments on selected topics at biweekly internal forums and other meetings
• Providing inputs on the macroeconomic context, recent developments and medium-term outlook for lending operations, in particular, the series of Development Policy Loans
• Preparing as time permits, longer analytic notes on key issues relevant to Indonesia’s economy

Qualifications

• M.A. or Ph.D. in Economics, Statistics or related discipline.
• At least 3 to 5 years relevant work experience.
• Excellent data skills and familiarity with statistical methods and standard econometric software packages (STATA)
• Familiarity with key Indonesian economic series and data sources.
• Good English speaking and writing skills
• Ability to put together clear and crisp presentations
• Good team worker, self-motivated
• Pro-active and enthusiastic personality

Reporting arrangements
The World Bank’s Senior Country Economist for Indonesia will be the “line manager” to whom the economic analyst will report and from whom he or she  will seek overall guidance.

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Closing Date: 07-Sep-2009