Namibia Subscribes to the International Monetary Fund’s Special Data Dissemination Standard

IMF News, December 15, 2022

Source details

Canonical URL: Namibia Subscribes to the International Monetary Fund’s Special Data Dissemination Standard

Press Release No. 22/436 dated December 15, 2022.
Namibia subscribed to the IMF’s Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS).
Namibia became the fifth country in Sub-Saharan African to reach this goal.
Namibia graduated from the Enhanced General Data Dissemination System (e-GDDS), in which the country had participated since June 27, 2016.
Media contact: IMF Communications Department, PRESS OFFICER: Nico Mombrial, Phone: +1 202 623-7100, Email: MEDIA@IMF.org.

The subscription underscores Namibia’s commitment to transparency and implementing internationally accepted best practices in statistics and data dissemination (statement by Bert Kroese, Chief Statistician and Data Officer, and Director of the IMF’s Statistics Department).
Expected benefits noted:
- Enhances availability of timely statistics according to an advance release calendar.
- Contributes to sound macroeconomic policies and the proper functioning of financial markets.
- Associated, according to IMF research, with a significant improvement in countries’ sovereign financing conditions (as referenced by Bert Kroese).

The SDDS was established by the IMF in March 1996.
Purpose: to guide members in the dissemination of economic and financial data to the public.
Subscription is voluntary; a subscribing member commits to observe the standard and to publish information (metadata) about its data dissemination practices.
The IMF’s Tenth Review of the Data Standards Initiatives (concluded in February 2022):
- Underscored the important role the Data Standards Initiatives have played since the mid-1990s in promoting data transparency as a global public good.
- Stressed the importance of supporting e-GDDS countries’ advancement toward the SDDS.

The National Summary Data Page of Namibia is maintained by the Namibia Statistics Agency and includes the SDDS data categories.
Comprehensive documentation on Namibia’s related statistical practices is published at the IMF’s Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board (DSBB).
The Data Standards Initiatives also include the SDDS Plus.

Source: Press Release No. 22/436, IMF Communications Department, December 15, 2022.