The International Monetary Fund's (IMF) recent announcement that the United Kingdom now adheres a key transparency and openness requirement will create "greater understanding," a leading IMF statistician said in a news release.
The UK has completed requirements of the IMF's Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) Plus, the highest tier of the fund's data standards initiatives, the IMF announced in its Thursday, Aug. 24 news release. Meeting those requirements means the UK's SDDS Plus data can now be accessed through the IMF's Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board.
In the news release, Bert Kroese, chief statistician, data officer and the IMF's director of its statistics department welcomed the UK's completion of the requirements. He also noted that "as a global financial center, the dissemination of the new data sets under the SDDS Plus will be invaluable in fostering a deeper understanding and more informed assessments of the performance of the UK financial sector and the cross-border financial linkages."
Kroese's appointment to his position at the IMF was announced in April. He succeeded Louis-Marc Ducharme in May, following Ducharme's retirement.
Established by 44 founding member countries in 1944, near the end of World War II and following the Great Depression of the 1930s, the IMF seeks to maintain a framework of international economic cooperation, according to information on its website. The IMF's current membership includes 190 countries, is operated by a staff from 150 nations and is governed by and accountable to those member countries.
The IMF's SDDS plus is a voluntary dissemination of a member nation's economic and financial data aimed at enhancing transparency and openness. IMF data standards initiatives were introduced in the mid-1990s to promote member nation data transparency and promote solid statistical systems development following the period's worldwide financial crisis, in which lack of information dissemination played a role.
IMF's Data Standards Initiatives oversees SDDS and the fund's Enhanced General Data Dissemination System, as well as SDDS Plus.
The SDDS Plus aims to "assist statistically advanced countries" by publishing comprehensive, timely and reliable economic and financial data that general government debt, sectoral balance sheets and financial soundness indicator, the news release said. Following the Tenth Review of the IMF Data Standards Initiatives in February, the IMF Executive Board referred to significant progress by SDDS countries to adhere to the SDDS Plus and encouraged more to make the same transition.
Other nations that have reached SDDS Plus status include United States, Japan, Germany, France, Brazil and Canada.
Anyone who would like more information may visit the Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board on IMF's website.