Press Release No. 05/14

Press Release: The Arab Republic of Egypt Subscribes to the IMF's Special Data Dissemination Standard

January 31, 2005

On January 31, 2005, the Arab Republic of Egypt became the 59^th subscriber to the International Monetary Fund's Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS). Mr. Robert Edwards, Director of the IMF Statistics Department applauded Egypt's subscription to the SDDS and noted that this is a major step for Egypt's official statistics and for its data users. Mr. Edwards also noted that Egypt's subscription to the SDDS represents a strong commitment to transparency and a significant achievement in implementing international best practices in statistics.

The SDDS, established by the IMF in March 1996, is intended to guide members in the provision of their economic and financial data to the public. Subscription to the SDDS is expected to enhance the availability of timely and comprehensive statistics and thereby contribute to the pursuit of sound macroeconomic policies and the improved functioning of financial markets. The SDDS identifies four dimensions of data dissemination—the data: coverage, periodicity, and timeliness; access by the public; the integrity of the disseminated data; and the quality of the disseminated data. Although subscription is voluntary, a subscribing member commits to observe the standard and to provide information (metadata) to the IMF about its data dissemination practices. This information is made publicly available on the IMF's Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board (DSBB).

The DSBB now provides comprehensive documentation in English on the Arab Republic of Egypt's statistical practices for SDDS data categories, hyperlinked to actual country data included in the mandatory National Summary Data Page maintained by the Ministry of Planning.