Namibia subscribed to the IMF’s Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS), becoming the fifth country in Sub-Saharan African to reach this goal. By subscribing to the SDDS, Namibia graduated from the Enhanced General Data Dissemination System (e-GDDS) in which the country had participated since June 27, 2016.
Bert Kroese, Chief Statistician and Data Officer, and Director of the IMF’s Statistics Department, welcomed this major milestone in the country’s statistical development. “I congratulate the authorities on the subscription to the SDDS. It underscores Namibia’s strong commitment to transparency and is a significant achievement in implementing internationally accepted best practices in statistics and data dissemination. This achievement will serve Namibia well, especially, in this fast changing and vulnerable global environment. As IMF research showed, the implementation of the data dissemination standards, including subscription to the SDDS, is associated with a significant improvement in countries’ sovereign financing conditions”. He added.
The SDDS, established by the IMF in March 1996, is intended to guide members in the dissemination of economic and financial data to the public. Subscription to the SDDS enhances the availability of timely statistics according to an advance release calendar, thereby contributing to sound macroeconomic policies and the proper functioning of financial markets. Although voluntary, a subscribing member commits to observe the standard and to publish information (metadata) about its data dissemination practices.
In concluding the Tenth Review of the IMF Data Standards Initiatives in February 2022, the IMF Executive Board underscored the important role that the Data Standards Initiatives have played since the mid-1990s in promoting data transparency as a global public good by encouraging countries to voluntarily publish key macroeconomic and financial data. The Tenth Review also stressed the importance of supporting the e-GDDS countries’ advancement toward the SDDS.
The National Summary Data Page of Namibia, maintained by the Namibia Statistics Agency, includes the SDDS data categories, and comprehensive documentation on the related statistical practices is published at the IMF’s Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board (DSBB). Namibia SDDS information is available at http://dsbb.imf.org/Pages/SDDS/CountryList.aspx .
In addition to the SDDS and the e-GDDS, the Data Standards Initiatives include the SDDS Plus. Detailed information on the Data Standards Initiatives can be found at https://dsbb.imf.org.