Press Release No. 14/501

Press Release: Launch of the New Quarterly External Debt Statistics Database

November 5, 2014

The World Bank, in collaboration with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Statistics Department, launched the new Quarterly External Debt Statistics (QEDS) database featuring new concepts and definitions as well as new classifications of external debt statistics (EDS) and tables that enhance their analytical use.

The QEDS database brings together detailed EDS of economies that subscribe to the IMF's Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) and a selected number of economies that participate in the IMF's General Data Dissemination System (GDDS). Currently, the QEDS database provides quarterly EDS for 71 SDDS subscribers (mostly high- and middle- income economies), New Zealand and Euro area, and 45 GDDS participants (mostly developing economies) disaggregated by institutional sectors, original maturity, and debt instruments, and for some of these economies also disaggregated by currency and remaining maturity.

In order to disseminate consistent cross-economy and historical statistics, the World Bank converted data that were reported on the basis of the 2003 EDS Guide/BPM5 to the basis of the 2013 External Debt Statistics: Guide for Compilers and Users (2013 EDS Guide) . The conversion was conducted using generic conversion rules in consultation with reporting QEDS economies. The QEDS database on a 2003 EDS Guide/BPM5 basis has been discontinued and is no longer available to the public.

The QEDS database can be accessed through the World Bank's QEDS Debt Data portal at http://datatopics.worldbank.org/debt/home. Access to the QEDS database is provided through the World Bank Open Data site at http://databank.worldbank.org/ under "Quarterly External Debt Statistics/SDDS (New)" and "Quarterly External Debt Statistics/GDDS (New)."

For more information on the methodological changes from the 2003 EDS Guide/BPM5 to the 2013 EDS Guide/BPM6, visit http://datatopics.worldbank.org/debt/sdds-methodology and http://datatopics.worldbank.org/debt/gdds-methodology.

Media Relations Contact: Lucie Mboto Fouda, Tel: 202 623-6031