Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board |
Quarterly Update on the Special Data Dissemination Standard—Fourth Quarter 2004 March 7, 2005 New Subscriber 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. Observance Status As of the end of the fourth quarter of 2004, none of the 58 SDDS subscribers had been declared not in observance of the SDDS requirements for the coverage, periodicity, and timeliness of the data and for the dissemination of advance release calendars (ARCs) (Table 1). (The IMF's Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board (DSBB) disseminates a complete list of subscribers. At this writing, there are 60 subscribers to the SDDS. In January 2005, the SDDS added two new subscribers-the Arab Republic of Egypt and the Russian Federation-which the first quarterly review for 2005 will note under new subscribers.) Observance of SDDS metadata requirements improved with the increase in posted Summary Methodologies.
|
Monitoring of Data Releases The IMF monitors the data and access dimensions of the SDDS for each subscriber by comparing the first appearance of new information on the NSDP against the last release date allowed by the SDDS timeliness requirements. In the fourth quarter of 2004, there was a decline of 1.7 percentage points in the on time dissemination of monthly data categories compared with the same quarter in 2003 and an increase of 0.7 percentage point for quarterly data categories; the timeliness of central government operations declined by about 5 percentage points, central government debt by more than 6 percentage points, while external debt timeliness increased by about 7 percentage points and national accounts by more than 6 percentage points (Table 2). Compared to the previous quarter, there was a decline of about one percentage point in the on-time dissemination of monthly data categories and almost no change for quarterly data categories; unemployment increased by about 5 percentage points and the balance of payments increased by about 4 percentage points, while central government debt declined by about 10 percentage points. Annual data experienced an increase of almost 5 percentage points in the number of on time releases compared with the previous quarter, and an increase of more than 7 percentage points compared to the same quarter in 2004.
|