SADC states lag behind in data dissemination

Isaac Pinielo | Wednesday March 16, 2016 15:00

Officially opening a regional workshop on debt statistics compilation and reporting in Gaborone on Monday, deputy statistician general, Boitumelo Matlhaga said while substantial progress has been made by member states, there is a lot of room for improvement.

She noted that for some years, a number of countries in the region only went as far as complying with the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) General Data Dissemination System (GDDS), adding that they are yet to accede with the more stringent reporting requirements under the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) and SDDS-plus.

“Therefore, the IMF introduced the Enhanced General Data Dissemination System (e-GDDS) on May 1, 2015 which superseded the GDDS,” said Matlhaga.

She further said through the initiative the IMF aims to strengthen the participating countries’ statistical capacity, hence facilitating their transit to SDDS.

The deputy statistician general stated that there is need to further improve transparency and disclosure of information through enhancing the quality, coverage and timeliness of reporting to meet international standards.

“Hence one of the key requirements of the e-GDDS is to publish data on key macroeconomic indicators on a web-based National Summary Data Page (NSDP),” she said.

Matlhaga said publication of essential macroeconomic data through the NSDP provides policy makers and other stakeholders with easy access to information for monitoring economic performance and decision-making.

“I am pleased to inform you that Botswana is already implementing this recommendation of the e-GDDS,” she explained.

From a national perspective, Matlhaga pointed out that countries need to prioritise the generation of statistics that get disseminated regularly, including through websites of governments and central banks.

At the regional level, she said, governments should strive to post and maintain updated statistics on the websites of regional bodies, such as the East African Community (EAC) and SADC.

She said the SADC aspect is important in the tracking of countries’ performance against regional macroeconomic convergence objectives. From an investor level, the statistician said regular, timely and accurate disclosure of information is one of the key variables used in country risk assessment and credit rating. She said this is even more important in this post-crisis era where equity and bond investors are more careful in assessing creditworthiness of sovereign borrowers prior to investing their funds.

“Thus governments need to generate and disseminate own reliable information, rather than only rely on other agencies to report on their behalf,” said Matlhaga.

The five-day workshop is conducted by the Macroeconomic and Financial Management Institute of Eastern and Southern Africa (MEFMI) in collaboration with the IMF.

It is attended by participants from its 14 member countries: Botswana, Angola, Burundi, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

It seeks to provide participants with the opportunity to enhance their capacity in the collection, compilation and dissemination of the public debt and government finance statistics based on existing international standards and conventions.