Press Release No. 09/437

Press Release: Cyprus and Malta Subscribe to the IMF Special Data Dissemination Standard

December 1, 2009

Cyprus and Malta subscribed today to the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS), bringing the number of subscribing countries to 66, including all 16 members of the euro area. Both Malta and Cyprus adopted the euro on January 1, 2008.

Ms. Adelheid Burgi-Schmelz, Director of the IMF Statistics Department, welcomed the SDDS subscriptions of Malta and Cyprus as a major step for official statistics and the data users of both countries. Ms. Burgi-Schmelz also noted that SDDS subscription represents the strong commitment to transparency in Cyprus and Malta, as well as a significant achievement in implementing internationally accepted best practices in statistics.

The SDDS, established by the IMF in March 1996, is intended to guide members in the provision of their economic and financial data to the public. Subscription to the SDDS is expected to enhance the availability of timely and comprehensive statistics, thereby contributing to the pursuit of sound macroeconomic policies and the improved functioning of financial markets. The SDDS identifies four dimensions of data dissemination—the data: coverage, periodicity, and timeliness; access by the public; the integrity of the disseminated data; and the quality of the disseminated data. Although subscription is voluntary, a subscribing member commits to observe the standard and to provide information (metadata) to the IMF about its 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 of Cyprus and Malta for SDDS data categories, hyperlinked to actual country data included in the mandatory National Summary Data Page maintained, respectively, by the Central Bank of Cyprus and by Malta’s National Statistics Office. Similarly, information and metadata for the euro area are available on a dedicated DSBB page.

Useful links:

Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board: http://dsbb.imf.org/Applications/web/sddshome/

Metadata for the euro area: http://dsbb.imf.org/Applications/web/euronote/