Press Release No. 03/03

On January 10, Ukraine became the 52nd subscriber to the International Monetary Fund's Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS), marking a major step forward in the development of the country's statistical system. The Ukrainian authorities view subscription as the culmination of many initiatives on the statistical front. Ukraine is the first country of the Commonwealth of Independent States to subscribe to the SDDS.

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) (http://dsbb.imf.org/Applications/web/sddshome/).

Since its independence in 1991, Ukraine has made a significant effort to bring its official statistics in line with international standards. This effort has been supported by technical assistance from Eurostat-TACIS, the International Labour Organization, IMF, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Bank, various United Nations organizations, and development cooperation agencies of a number of countries. While several of these technical assistance programs are still in progress or being developed, SDDS subscription represents a milestone for Ukraine's statistical system.

The DSBB now provides comprehensive documentation in English on Ukraine's statistical practices for SDDS data categories, hyperlinked to actual country data included in the mandatory National Summary Data Page maintained by Ukraine's national statistical office.