Press Release: Seychelles Subscribes to the IMF’s Special Data Dissemination Standard

May 1, 2015

Press Release No. 15/184
May 1, 2015

Seychelles subscribed today to the International Monetary Fund’s Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS), bringing the number of subscribing countries to 64. Seychelles is the 13th country to graduate to the SDDS from the IMF’s General Data Dissemination System (GDDS), in which the country has participated in since December 18, 2006. Seychelles has benefitted from the Department for International Development (DFID) Enhanced Data Dissemination Initiative, financed by the government of the United Kingdom, which aims to assist countries to graduate from the GDDS to the SDDS. Seychelles is the third Sub-Saharan African country to subscribe to the SDDS.

“Seychelles’ subscription to the SDDS represents a major step forward for official statistics in the country and for those who use these data,” said Mr. Louis Marc Ducharme, Director of the IMF’s Statistics Department. “The subscription to the standards underscores Seychelles’ strong commitment to transparency, as well as the adoption of internationally accepted best practices in statistics,” he added.

The SDDS, established by the IMF in March 1996, is intended to guide members in the provision of economic and financial data to the public. Subscription to the SDDS enhances the availability of timely statistics, thereby contributing to the pursuit of sound macroeconomic policies and the functioning of financial markets. The SDDS identifies four dimensions of data dissemination—data coverage, periodicity, and timeliness; access by the public; the integrity of the data; and data quality. Although 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 statistical practices of Seychelles for SDDS data categories, hyperlinked to country data included in the National Summary Data Page, maintained by the Seychelles’ National Bureau of Statistics. Seychelles’ SDDS information is available at http://dsbb.imf.org/Pages/SDDS/CountryList.aspx.

IMF COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT

Media Relations
E-mail: media@imf.org
Phone: 202-623-7100