By Peter OBIORA InvestAdvocate

Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Wednesday the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) Plus, the third and highest tier of the Fund’s Data Standards Initiatives is now online (at SDDS Plus country data) with data from an initial cluster of eight adherents including France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United States.

The Fund in a statement quoted Min Zhu, IMF’s deputy managing director congratulating the authorities of these countries noting that the SDDS Plus “is an important contribution to addressing data gaps and data deficiencies that hampered surveillance of member countries’ economies during the recent global financial crisis.”

Zhu added that discipline in the timely and regular reporting of several new and internationally-comparable datasets will help support more informed policy analysis and decision making around the world.

The IMF established the  Data Standards Initiatives in the mid-1990 to enhance member countries’ data transparency and to promote the development of sound statistical systems. The need for data standards was highlighted by the financial crises of the mid-1990s and again in the late-2000s, when information deficiencies were seen to play a role. The Data Standards Initiatives also include the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) and the General Data Dissemination System (GDDS).

Detailed information on the Data Standards Initiatives can be found on the Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board at www.dsbb.imf.org