Saudi Arabia subscribes to IMF’s SDDS

Saudi Arabia has subscribed to the International Monetary Fund’s Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS), marking a major step forward for official statistics in the country.

Subscription to the SDDS is expected to enhance the country’s availability of timely and comprehensive statistics and contribute to the pursuit of sound macroeconomic policies.

Saudi Arabia is the first SDDS subscriber among the G20 SDDS countries to adopt the SDMX technology in the National Summary Data Page (NSDP)— a one-stop online data publication portal—facilitating dissemination in both human- and machine-readable (SDMX) formats.

Minister of Finance Mohammed Al-Jadaan described the subscription of the Kingdom to SDDS as an important step in the path taken by the government to enhance financial disclosure and transparency in accordance with international standards. In addition, this supports the previous steps taken by the Kingdom in this field like implementation of Government Finance Statistic Manual (GFS2014) of IMF, as well as issuance of the periodic financial reports of the budget. It also supports the efforts made by Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) and General Authority for Statistics in development of measurement and dissemination of the economic data in the Kingdom.

He pointed out that the Kingdom's progress in the field of transparency and disclosure of financial and economic data supports efforts to raise the efficiency of governance and adjustment of public finance and improve the investment climate. Moreover, it should strengthen the Kingdom's position at the international level, especially as the Kingdom is on the threshold of assuming the presidency of the G20 during the coming year.

The SDDS will contribute to the availability of real-time and comprehensive statistics, which will increase the level of data access to financial markets to help in making investment decisions in the Kingdom.

The Kingdom's subscription to the IMF's SDDS was signed on Wednesday in the premises of the Ministry of Finance in Riyadh, where the agreement was signed by the Assistant Minister of Finance for International Affairs and Financial Policies Abdul Aziz Al-Rashid and Mrs. Patricia Tombarello, head of the Strategic, Standards and Review Unit, Statistics Department, IMF, in the presence of Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Ministry of Finance, Mr. Abdulaziz Al-Freih.

Dr. Ahmed Bin Abdul Karim Al-Khulaifi, governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, said: "Efforts of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in cooperation with IMF have been successful in the subscription to SDDS as a part of the Saudi Vision 2030 approach to achieve the highest levels of transparency and benefit from the best universal practices.

Dr. Fahad Bin Sulaiman Al-Tekhaifi, president of the General Authority for Statistics, pointed out that the Kingdom's subscription to SDDS comes in pursuit of one of the national strategic statistical goals in developing the statistical sector comprehensively and dissemination the latest statistical data about the Kingdom according to the best international practices.

IMF's SDDS has four themes for data dissemination: coverage, periodicity of publication and timing, easy access to data, and the integrity and quality of published data. SDMX initiative contributes to strengthen the capacities of the governmental authorities to communicate through its statistical data, where it forms a link between the producers and the users of data via SDMX platforms.