OREANDA-NEWS. February 26, 2016. A mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s Statistics Department visited Abuja during February 15-19, 2016, to assist the authorities with the implementation of the Enhanced General Data Dissemination System (e-GDDS), which was endorsed by the Executive Board in May 2015. The mission supported the development of the National Summary Data Page (NSDP), which will be posted on the National Bureau of Statistics website, utilizing the Open Data Platform installed with the support of the African Development Bank. The page aims to serve as a one-stop publication vehicle for essential macroeconomic data. This makes Nigeria the largest economy in the first wave of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to implement the recommendations of the e-GDDS.

Publication of essential macroeconomic data through the new NSDP will provide national policy makers, domestic and international stakeholders, including investors and rating agencies with easy access to information that the IMF’s Executive Board has identified as critical for monitoring economic conditions and policies. Making this information easily accessible in both human and machine-readable formats, and based on an Advance Release Calendar will allow all users to have simultaneous access to timely data and will bring greater data transparency.

The authorities are encouraged by the progress that Nigeria has made to achieve this important milestone in its quest for better statistics. The NSDP will give users access to full information about Nigeria’s e-GDDS data categories by April 29, 2016.

Background

The e-GDDS was established by the IMF’s Executive Board in May 2015 to support improved data transparency, encourage statistical development, and help create synergies between data dissemination and surveillance. The e-GDDS superseded the GDDS, which was established in 1997. A link to the country’s NSDP will be available on the IMF’s Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board (DSBB) by April 29 2016: at http://dsbb.imf.org.