Namibia joins the International Monetary Fund’s Special Data Dissemination Standard
Namibia recently subscribed to the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS), becoming the fifth country in Sub-Saharan Africa to reach this goal.
According to the IMF statement, by subscribing to the SDDS, Namibia graduated from the Enhanced General Data Dissemination System (e-GDDS), in which the country had participated since 27 June 2016.
“I congratulate the authorities on the subscription to the SDDS. It underscores Namibia’s strong commitment to transparency and is a significant achievement in implementing internationally accepted best practices in statistics and data dissemination. This achievement will serve Namibia well, especially in this fast-changing and vulnerable global environment,” said Bert Kroese, the Chief Statistician, and Data Officer and Director of the IMF’s Statistics Department.
Kroese welcomed this milestone in the country’s statistical development. He added that, as IMF research showed, the implementation of the data dissemination standards, including a subscription to the SDDS, is associated with significant improvement in countries’ sovereign financing conditions.
In addition, subscription to the SDDS enhances the availability of timely statistics according to an advance release calendar, thereby contributing to sound macroeconomic policies and the proper functioning of financial markets, according to a statement by the IMF.
The SDDS was established by the IMF in March 1996 to guide members in the dissemination of economic and financial data to the public. Although voluntary, a subscribing member commits to observe the standard and to publish information (metadata) about its data dissemination practices, he IMF statement continued.
“In concluding the Tenth Review of the IMF Data Standards Initiatives in February 2022, the IMF Executive Board underscored the important role that the Data Standards Initiatives have played since the mid-1990s in promoting data transparency as a global public good by encouraging countries to voluntarily publish key macroeconomic and financial data. The Tenth Review also stressed the importance of supporting the e-GDDS countries’ advancement toward the SDDS.”
