Republic of Serbia applying the IMF Enhanced General Data Dissemination System
General Data Dissemination System – GDDS, which was established in 1997, presents a structured system whereby the member states of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) express their voluntary commitment to act on upgrading the quality of data that are collected and distributed through statistical systems over an extended period, with the aim to ensure the macroeconomic analyses of the best possible quality. The basic GDDS purpose is to support countries in their developing sound statistical systems, especially stressing encompassing coverage, good quality and updated data and dissemination practice as regards economic, financial and socio-demographic data.
Within the GDDS, metadata are distributed in the following categories:
- Real sector (national accounts, prices, industrial production, labour market),
- Fiscal sector,
- Financial sector,
- External sector,
- Socio-demographic data (population, public health, poverty rate).
The mission of the IMF statistics department visited Belgrade from 11 – 17 April 2018, with the aim to render assistance to the Republic of Serbia in applying the Enhanced General Data Dissemination System – e‑GDDS. The system was established by the IMF Executive Directors in May 2015, the objective being to upgrade the data transparency, to spur and encourage statistical development and to help creating the synergy between the statistical dissemination and control. The system e-GDDS replaced and succeeded GDDS.
The mission supported the development of the National Summary Data Page – NSDP, which is posted on the website of the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia (SORS), in cooperation with the National bank of Serbia, the Ministry of finance, and the Belgrade Stock Exchange. The NSDP is based on the Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange – SDMX system and is aimed to serve as a unique tool for publishing the major macroeconomic and financial data.
Starting from 8 June 2018, the NSDP is available at http://www.stat.gov.rs/en-US/NSDP-Serbia, as well as in the IMF Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board (DSBB) at http://dsbb.imf.org.
By introducing the data publishing through the new NSDP, we ensured that the policy makers, national and international data users, including the investors and the rating evaluation service agencies should have a facilitated approach to the information that the IMF Executive Board recognized and identified as the data of crucial importance for following the economic status and economic policies. By ensuring a single access to the subject information, we enabled all our users to have a simultaneous access to the updated data and contributed to the enhanced data transparency.
The establishment of the e-GDDS and the NSDP represents yet another confirmation of commitment of the SORS to implement international statistical standards, and another step forward in deepening and improving partner relationship between the SORS and the IMF.