This paper documents the construction of a 1992 social accounting matrix (SAM) for Tanzania. On the basis of recently generated national accounts data, a 56-sector SAM is built focusing on the disaggregation of agriculture — which comprises 21 of the 56 sectors. First, a highly aggregated SAM (macrosam) is designed to set the macroeconomic framework that provides the control totals for the disaggregation procedure. Then, the sector disaggregation of the microeconomic SAM (microsam) is done. Data sources and the data adjustments made are presented. The microsam differentiates 4 household types and 5 labor categories. Special features of the microsam include non-monetary, own-household consumption and separate marketing margins on domestic products, exports, and imports — which play a crucial role in the low income economies of sub-Saharan Africa. Since the data base is to be used for economic policy modeling, consideration of these features will have a significant influence on the results of the analysis. Due to data insufficiencies the first microsam obtained from adjusted raw data (protosam) is highly unbalanced. A cross-entropy estimation method is applied to balance the protosam and generate the final estimated 1992 microsam for Tanzania that uses all available information in a consistent framework.
