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

January 7, 2005


On December 22, 2004, the Republic of Belarus became the 58th 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 Republic of Belarus's authorities view subscription as the culmination of many initiatives on the statistical front. The Republic of Belarus is the fifth 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).

The DSBB now provides comprehensive documentation in English on the Republic of Belarus'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 Statistics and Analysis of Republic of Belarus.





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