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Quarterly Update on the Special Data Dissemination Standard—Second Quarter 2003
August 7, 2003

Fifth Review of the Fund's Data Standards Initiatives

On July 9, 2003, the Executive Board of the IMF conducted its Fifth Review of the Fund's Data Standards Initiatives covering the SDDS, the GDDS, and the Data Quality Program (DQP). The main and supplementary papers as well as the Public Information Notice (PIN) "IMF Executive Board Reviews Data Standards Initiatives", which details the results of that discussion, have been posted on the Fund's external website and may be accessed by clicking here.

Observance Status

By the end of the second quarter 2003, 52 of 53 subscribers met the SDDS requirements for the coverage, periodicity, and timeliness of the data and for the dissemination of advance release calendars (Table 1). (A complete list of subscribers may be accessed on the IMF's Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board (DSBB) at (http://dsbb.imf.org/Applications/web/sddscountrylist/.) Also, by early July, all subscribers disseminated a National Summary Data Page (NSDP) providing macroeconomic and financial data consistent with the metadata posted on the DSBB.1

External Debt Statistics

The transition period for the new quarterly external debt data category expired on March 31, 2003; subscribers have until the end of September 2003 to disseminate data for the second quarter of this year. As of June 30, 2003, 16 subscribers--Argentina, the Czech Republic, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (China), Indonesia, the Republic of Lithuania, Norway, the Philippines, the Republic of Poland, the Slovak Republic, South Africa, Thailand, Tunisia, and Turkey--disseminate data for this new data category on their NSDPs.

Table 1. SDDS Indicators
Indicators As of
Jun. 30, 2002
As of
Mar. 31, 2003
As of
Jun. 30, 2003
Number of subscribers   50 53 53
Number of countries in observance1   49 52 52
Number of countries with NSDP hyperlinked to the DSBB   49 52   53*
Number of countries with summary methodologies posted   46 53 53
Number of summary methodologies posted 718 835   863  
Subscribers disclosing data based on the reserves template   50 53 53
Subscribers disseminating international investment position (IIP) data   40 53 53
Subscribers disseminating external debt data2     1    8 16
*As of July 7, 2003.
1Observance of the externally monitorable elements of the SDDS, i.e., the coverage, periodicity, and timeliness of the data and the use of advance release calendars. Other elements of the SDDS dealing with the integrity and quality of the data are on a self-disclosure basis, with subscribers providing information on which users can make their own judgments.
2The transition period for the dissemination of external debt data expired on March 31, 2003. Given that these data are to be disseminated with quarterly periodicity and three months timeliness, data for
end-June 2003 are required to be disseminated no later than September 30, 2003.

Monitoring

Monitoring of the data and access dimensions of the SDDS is carried out against the release dates stated in subscribers' advance release calendars (ARCs) and metadata. In the second quarter, there was an overall decline in the on-time dissemination of releases for monthly and quarterly data categories compared with the same quarter of 2002 (Table 2). This occurred because some subscribers missed updating their National Summary Data Pages (NSDPs)--which are used for SDDS monitoring--on scheduled release dates. Compared with the previous quarter, there was a slight improvement in the timeliness of monthly data, but some slippage across quarterly data categories, notably for national accounts and balance of payments.

Table 2. Monitoring of Observance of the SDDS, October 2000-June 2003
Percentage of Monthly and Quarterly Data Disseminated on Time1
(Quarterly Averages)
Data Categories Q2/02 (R) Q1/03 (R) Q2/03
Monthly and quarterly data 94.4 91.3 90.7
Monthly data 93.6 92.0 93.1
Production index 94.2 94.6 93.2
Consumer prices 96.6 97.4 96.7
Producer prices 92.1 94.0 94.7
Central government operations 88.8 79.9 86.8
Analytical accounts of banking sector 92.3 91.0 91.3
Analytical accounts of central bank 95.3 93.8 93.6
Official reserves 93.3 92.7 94.2
Reserves template 98.0 93.6 95.3
Merchandise trade 92.0 91.3 92.2
Quarterly data 95.3 90.7 88.3
National accounts 96.1 92.1 86.7
Employment 100.0 92.3 90.4
Unemployment 96.9 92.3 89.4
Wages and earnings 92.8 91.5 87.1
Central government debt 91.6 78.6 85.0
Balance of payments 94.5 97.1 91.1
1Number of data categories released on the day announced in the advance release calendar as a percentage of the total number of data categories to be released.
(R): Revised data

DSBB Enhancement Project

Following the launch of the enhanced DSBB website (http://dsbb.imf.org/) on March 10, 2003, the Statistics Department initiated a DSBB Users Survey, which is available at (http://dsbb.imf.org/Applications/web/dsbbsurvey/) and is aimed at gathering information on users' reactions to the enhanced DSBB (Box 1).

Preliminary results from the survey indicate that the DSBB has been more regularly accessed by users since the enhancements. More than two-thirds of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the information was easier to find and access to related sites improved. Among the new features, the ability to compare "key concepts" (detailed information on data categories by countries) was seen as the most valuable enhancement. Almost half of the respondents so far have been economists, with students, statisticians, and academics the most common categories among the remaining groups.

Box 1. DSBB Enhancements

DSBB users can now access a multitude of "views" into the DSBB metadata:


1India posted an NSDP (http://www.finmin.nic.in/stats_data/nsdp_sdds/index.html) that meets the SDDS requirements on July 7, 2003.