IMF’s Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS)

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n 1^st May 2015, (1/5/15), Seychelles graduated to the IMFs SDDS to become the 64^th country subscribing to this initiative and the third country in sub-Saharan Africa after South Africa and Mauritius.

It is to be noted that prior to graduating to the SDDS, Seychelles participated in the IMFs General Data Dissemination System (GDDS) and officially became the 88^th member of the IMFs GDDS on 18^th December 2006. Seychelles is the 13^th country to graduate to the SDDS from the GDDS.

What is the SDDS?

The Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) is an IMF initiative established in 1996 to guide countries that  have or are seeking access to capital markets to disseminate key data so that users in general, and financial market participants in particular, have adequate information to assess the economic situations of individual countries.

It is a global benchmark for disseminating macroeconomic data to the public. As the name indicates, the SDDS is a standard with precise requirements on data coverage, and adherence implies meeting the four criteria in dissemination which are frequency, periodicity, timeliness, transparency and quality and consistency.

Why the SDDS?

Data dissemination standards are important because they help enhance the availability of timely and comprehensive statistics, which contributes to the design and monitoring of sound macroeconomic policies and the improved functioning of financial markets. Subscription to the SDDS provides investors with up-to-date data that are frequent, timely and accessible. This facilitates the country’s access – for both the public and private sector - to international capital markets, potentially implying higher levels of foreign investment.

The four dimensions of the SDDS

Countries that subscribe to the SDDS agree to follow good practices in four areas or SDDS dimensions:

• coverage, periodicity, and timeliness of data;
• public access to the data;
• data integrity; and
• data quality.

Requirements of the SDDS

A country adhering to SDDS has to meet certain criteria. The requirements are as follows:

(i)Dissemination of the economic and financial data of the country on the National Summary Data Page (NSDP) which is hosted on a national web page and is hyperlinked with the IMF's Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board (DSBB). The NSDP is updated according to an Advance Release Calendar (ARC).

(ii)Dissemination of the ARC on a national webpage to be hyperlinked with the IMF website.

(iii)Detailed information about the statistical practices, or metadata, (description about data) in a prescribed IMF format of the SDDS data categories, for dissemination on the DSBB. 

(iv)Pursuance of good practice, (as described in the IMF Data Quality Assessment Framework) with respect to integrity, methodological soundness, accuracy, reliability, serviceability and accessibility aspects of data. 

Components of the SDDS

There are four major components of type of data disseminated by the SDDS and they are all part of economic statistics and financial data, except a last addendum item on population.