Press Release No. 05/219

Honduras has begun participating in the International Monetary Fund's General Data Dissemination System (GDDS), marking a major step forward in the development of the country's statistical system. Comprehensive information on its statistical production and dissemination practices now appears on the IMF's Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board (DSBB) (http://dsbb.imf.org/Applications/web/gdds/gddshome/).

Mrs. María Elena Mondragón, President of the Central Bank of Honduras, has stated that the country has undertaken the task of developing and improving its economic and financial statistics with a view to making them consistent with international codes and standards and to providing economic agents with more reliable and timely statistics, necessary for appropriate decision-making. After several years of advancing toward this objective, including the improvement of intersectoral consistency, expanding coverage, and adopting international sectoral manuals, Honduras is proud to announce its participation in the GDDS and the commitment of its authorities to strive for continuous improvement of the quality of its official statistics.

To date, 85 countries have participated in the GDDS and five have graduated to become subscribers to the IMF Special Data Dissemination Standard. At present, all 80 GDDS participants disseminate metadata (that is, descriptions of statistical methods and practices) and plans for improvement for their statistics and related technical assistance needs on the DSBB. The plans for improvement provide the international community with a useful framework to develop and coordinate technical cooperation projects for GDDS countries.

Mr. Rob Edwards, Director of the IMF Statistics Department said: "Honduras's participation in the General Data Dissemination System is a major accomplishment and will allow the country to take full advantage of this framework for developing its economic, financial, and socio-demographic data."

The GDDS, established by the IMF in 1997, provides a framework to assist IMF 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.