Press Release No. 19/338

Saudi Arabia Subscribes to the IMFs Special Data Dissemination Standard

September 18, 2019

Saudi Arabia subscribed today to the International Monetary Fund’s Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS), marking a major step forward for official statistics in the country. Subscription to the SDDS is expected to enhance the country’s availability of timely and comprehensive statistics and contribute to the pursuit of sound macroeconomic policies.

Saudi Arabia is the first SDDS subscriber among the G20 SDDS countries to adopt the SDMX technology in the National Summary Data Page (NSDP)— a one-stop online data publication portal—facilitating dissemination in both human- and machine-readable (SDMX) formats.

Mr. Louis Marc Ducharme, Chief Statistician and Data Officer, and Director of the Statistics Department of the IMF congratulated the authorities for this major milestone in the country’s statistical development. “The subscription to the SDDS underscores Saudi Arabia’s strong commitment to data transparency as well as to the adoption of international best practices in statistics,” Mr. Ducharme said.

“Saudi Arabia and the IMF have been working continuously to improve official statistics, and subscription to the SDDS is an important milestone ahead of Saudi Arabia G20 Presidency,” said Abdulaziz Alrasheed, the Saudi Assistant Minister for International Financial Affairs and Fiscal Policies. “The subscription to SDDS is fully in line with our Vision 2030 and objective of embracing transparency, with a view to enhance macroeconomic policies and ensure well-informed investment and policy decisions. Indeed, we are committed to further strengthening our statistical system and data transparency, in line with best practices.” he added.

Background

The SDDS, established by the IMF in March 1996, is intended to guide members in the provision 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 provide information (metadata) about data dissemination practices. This information is made publicly available on the IMF's Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board (DSBB).

The DSBB now provides comprehensive documentation in English on the statistical practices for the SDDS data categories, hyperlinked to the country data included in the National Summary Data Page, which is maintained by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Finance.

Saudi Arabia’s SDDS information is available at https://dsbb.imf.org/sdds/country/SAU/category