Zimbabwe has become of the countries to launch a new International Monetary Fund (IMF)-supported data portal aimed at facilitating access to statistics on the economic performance of the southern African country, the IMF announced on Wednesday.
IMF head of statistics Bert Kroese said Zimbabwe has, through the launch of the new data portal, implemented a key recommendation of the Fund’s Enhanced General Data Dissemination System (e-GDDS) to publish essential macroeconomic and financial data.
He said the e-GDDS is the first tier of the IMF Data Standards initiatives that seek to promote transparency as a global public good and encourage countries to voluntarily publish timely data that is essential for monitoring and analysing economic performance.
“I am confident that Zimbabwe will benefit from using the e-GDDS as a framework for further development of its statistical system,” Kroese said in a statement.
He said implementation of the e-GDDS recommendation and the launch of the National Summary Data Page are a testament to Zimbabwe’s commitment to data transparency.
The National Summary Data Page would 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.
It would facilitate access for data users in Zimbabwe and abroad, including policymakers, financial sector, private investors, think tanks, and the media.
More broadly, having data in line with the e-GDDS means it should be accessible in a standardised way to facilitate analysis of economic trends across countries and to provide an early detection of risks to help avert economic crises, thus supporting sustainable economic growth and development, Kroese added.
The National Summary Data Page is hosted on Zimbabwe’s national Open Data Platform, which is provided by the African Development Bank, and utilizes a modern data publication technology.
A link to Zimbabwe’s National Summary Data Page is available on the IMF’s Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board.
The data is provided by the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency, the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.
JN/APA