Sierra Leone implements IMF’s enhanced General Data Dissemination System

Sierra Leone has implemented the recommendations of the Enhanced General Data Dissemination System e-GDDS, endorsed by the IMF Executive Board in May 2015, by disseminating a National Summary Data Page NSDP. The page serves as a one-stop publication vehicle for essential macroeconomic data, in both human and machine, readable formats. This places Sierra Leone in the first wave of countries to implement the recommendations of the e-GDDS.

The National Summary Data Page is posted on the websites of Statistics Sierra Leone, the Bank of Sierra Leone, and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, utilising the Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange SDMX on the Open Data Platform provided by the African Development Bank. A link to Sierra Leone’s National Summary Data Page is available on the IMF’s Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board.

Louis Marc Ducharme, Director of the IMF’s Statistics Department, welcomed this major milestone in the country’s statistical development. “I am confident that Sierra Leone will benefit from using the e-GDDS as a framework for further development of its statistical system.”

Publication of essential macroeconomic data through the new National Summary Data Page will provide national policy makers, a broad range of 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 simultaneously available to all users will bring greater data transparency.

The authorities are pleased that Sierra Leone is among the first group of countries to implement the e-GDDS recommendations.

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 supersedes the GDDS, which was established in 1997.