Press Release No. 04/79

Vanuatu has begun participating in the International Monetary Fund's General Data Dissemination System (GDDS), marking an important step forward in the development of the country's statistical systems. Comprehensive information on its statistical production and dissemination practices were published on the IMF's Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board on April 8, 2004.

"Vanuatu is pleased to announce its subscription to the IMF GDDS programme. Over the past few years the Ministry of Finance, the National Statistics Office, and the Reserve Bank of Vanuatu have made tremendous gains in the quality and timeliness of the statistical data they produce. The production and further development of statistical data is seen by the Government as an essential tool to assist all those in the policy making field, from Government to donor partners. Therefore, we will continue to work on the quality of Vanuatu's data so that all decision makers can have access to the best possible statistical information during their deliberations," Mr. Simeon Malachi Athy, Director General of the Ministry of Finance of Vanuatu, said.

Mrs. Carol S. Carson, Director of the Statistics Department, noted: "Vanuatu's participation in the General Data Dissemination System will allow the country to take full advantage of this framework for developing its economic, financial, and socio-demographic data. Currently, Vanuatu receives technical assistance in statistics under the GDDS Project for Pacific Financial Technical Assistance Centre. The objective of the project covering countries in the region is to achieve a sustainable improvement in the capacity of statistical systems to enable the production and dissemination of reliable, timely, and relevant macroeconomic and socio-demographic statistics. The GDDS provides the framework for the project."

The GDDS, established by the IMF in 1997, provides a framework to assist Fund member countries to develop their statistical systems with the objective of producing comprehensive and accurate statistics for policy-making and analysis. It addresses the quality and the dissemination of data. In addition, the website shows Vanuatu's plans for improvements in its statistics infrastructure and the related technical assistance needs. This information provides the international community with a useful framework to develop and coordinate their technical cooperation projects in Vanuatu.