Press Release No. 24/484

Press Release – The Third Phase of the G20 Data Gaps Initiative (DGI-3) Delivers Insights for Action

December 18, 2024

Washington, DC: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) published, on behalf of the Inter-Agency Group on Economic and Financial Statistics (IAG) and the Financial Stability Board (FSB), the Second Progress Report on the implementation of the Third Phase of the G20 Data Gaps Initiative (DGI-3).

The report provides an update on the work undertaken since September 2023 to address critical data gaps that impede the policymakers’ ability to develop economic and financial policy to address climate change, financial innovation, and inclusive growth. The G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (FMCBGs) welcomed the Progress Report in their October 2024 communiqué.

The report highlights that:

• In 2024, a higher number of G20 and participating economies reported working to address data gaps across several recommendations, with significant increases in efforts to close the data gaps. This progress can be attributed to the work of the DGI Task Teams, that helped to better define targets, methodologies, and build capacity through recommendation-specific workshops.
• Notable progress was observed in the economies’ efforts to close data gaps related to Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and household distributional information. The international agencies made significant efforts in the work on physical and transition risk indicators, and digital currencies. For several of these data gaps, the methodological frameworks and source data were already available, facilitating swift advancement. In other areas, such as the distribution of household wealth across household groups, the Task Teams made substantial progress in developing frameworks and motivating economies to produce the necessary estimates.
• Significant progress has been made in measuring household distributional information. Several G20 economies are releasing data to support policy work in this area. In addition, the new experimental household wealth data developed by the European System of Central Banks for the Euro area marked a significant advancement in addressing the DGI-3 recommendation on household wealth. The new data offer an integrated picture of wealth across different household groups. The share of wealth held by the wealthiest 10 percent in the Euro area stood at 57 percent by the second quarter of 2024, while the bottom half held just 5 percent of total wealth.
• The progress in filling the climate-related data gaps, highlights the notable work done to better understand the work needed to transition to a low-carbon economy. The data provided under the DGI-3 showed that over the last decade, significant reductions in GHG emission intensities across the G20 have been made. However, the intensities are not decreasing fast enough to meet climate goals, and persistent data gaps in some areas hinder a true global assessment.

For the next year, the DGI-3 workplan focuses on finalizing methodological frameworks and reporting templates or updating existing ones, as well as developing and/or disseminating (experimental) estimates. To facilitate further progress, the work program includes a global conference planned for June 2025, thematic workshops, consultations and bilateral meetings. The IMF will, in close cooperation with the IAG and the FSB, continue to monitor the implementation of the DGI-3 and report progress to the G20 FMCBGs, annually.

Notes to editors

In October 2009, the FSB and the IMF published The Financial Crisis and Information Gaps, a report which responded to a request from the G20 FMCBGs to explore information gaps and provide appropriate proposals for strengthening data collection. The report, which set out a series of recommendations to address identified data gaps, was endorsed by G20 FMCBGs and led to the first phase of work on the data gaps initiative (DGI-1). In September 2015, it was agreed that the DGI work should continue into a second phase (DGI-2), with the objective to ensure regular collection and dissemination of reliable and timely statistics for policy use. The DGI-2 concluded in December 2021. In the fall of 2021, the G20 FMCBGs endorsed the concept note for the third phase of the initiative (DGI-3) and the G20 welcomed the DGI-3 workplan in both the G20 FMCBGs October 2022 meeting and the G20 Bali Leaders’ Declaration—November 2022, and asked the IMF, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and the Inter-Agency Group on Economic and Financial Statistics (IAG) to begin work on filling the identified 14 data gaps.

The main objective of the DGI-3 is to address the critical data gaps that exists in the face of the climate crisis, increasing economic polarization, and large-scale digital transformation. Its 14 recommendations are clustered around four statistical areas (i) climate change; (ii) household distributional information; (iii) Fintech and financial inclusion; and (iv) access to private sources of data and administrative data, and data sharing.

The member agencies of the Inter-Agency Group on Economic and Financial Statistics (IAG) are the Bank for International Settlements, European Central Bank, Eurostat, IMF (Chair), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United Nations and the World Bank. The Financial Stability Board (FSB) Secretariat also contributes to the IAG.