Press Release No. 24/262

Guinea-Bissau Implements the International Monetary Fund’s Enhanced General Data Dissemination System

July 8, 2024

Washington, DC: With the successful launch of a new data portal—the National Summary Data Page — Guinea-Bissau has implemented a key recommendation of the IMF’s Enhanced General Data Dissemination System (e-GDDS) to publish essential macroeconomic and financial data. The e-GDDS is the first tier of the IMF Data Standards Initiatives, which aim to promote transparency as a global public good and encourage countries to voluntarily publish timely data essential for monitoring and analyzing economic performance.

The implementation of the e-GDDS recommendation and the launch of the National Summary Data Page are testament to Guinea-Bissau’s commitment to data transparency. The National Summary Data Page will serve as a one-stop publication for disseminating the data recommended under the e-GDDS, covering national accounts and prices, government operations and debt, the monetary and financial sector, and the external sector. Moreover, it will facilitate access for data users in Guinea-Bissau and abroad, including policymakers, the financial sector, private investors, think tanks, and the media. More broadly, having data aligned with the e-GDDS will make it easier to analyze economic trends across countries and to provide an early detection of risks to help avert economic crises, thus supporting sustainable economic growth and development.

Thanks to the National Summary Data Page, Guinea-Bissau’s information has become easily accessible in both human- and machine-readable formats for users, resulting in greater data transparency. It is hosted on Guinea-Bissau’s national Open Data Platform (ODP), which is provided by the African Development Bank, and utilizes a modern data publication technology. A link to Guinea-Bissau’s National Summary Data Page is available on the IMF’s Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board. The data is provided by the Guinea-Bissau National Institute of Statistics, the Ministry of Finance, and the Central Bank of West African States.

Mr. 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 am confident that Guinea-Bissau will reap significant benefits from utilizing the e-GDDS as a framework for advancing its statistical system” Mr. Kroese stated. The benefits, including better sovereign financing conditions for countries participating in the e-GDDS, have recently been reviewed by the IMF Executive Board in the context of the Tenth Review of the IMF Data Standards Initiatives.

The launch of Guinea-Bissau’s National Summary Data Page is supported by an IMF technical assistance project financed by the Government of Japan.