In 1995, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) established the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) to provide access to internationally comparable, reliable, timely and high quality statistical data on international capital markets.
At the same time, a group of countries needed assistance for building their statistical capacity that would meet the SDDS requirements. Therefore, in 1997, the IMF established the General Data Dissemination System (GDDS), which later (in 2015) was superseded by the e-GDDS to concentrate on the dissemination of data essential for the IMF surveillance.
After the financial and economic crisis, in 2012 the IMF enhanced the SDDS and remodelled it to the Special Data Dissemination Standard Plus (SDDS Plus), bringing statistics on financial and macro-economic risks into focus.
Latvia has been participating in SDDS since 1996. In February 2017, the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Latvia supported the initiative to join the SDDS Plus, and as of August 2018, Latvia is fully compliant with the SDDS Plus requirements.
The adherence to the SDDS Plus:
- demonstrates that Latvia disseminates high quality statistical data on population and financial, real, fiscal and external sectors in accordance with the international data dissemination standards,
- gives positive signals to potential investors and credit rating agencies, and
- strengthens not only the position of Latvia but also that of the Economic and Monetary Union and the European Union in the world in the area of statistics.
In 2017, Latvijas Banka overtook the coordinating role to ensure the initiative in Latvia. Latvijas Banka, the Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia and the Treasury have committed to compile and publish a set of data categories. The Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia maintains the National Summary Data Page where all data categories, together with the responsible institution in Latvia, are listed; likewise, the page provides links to the data, including the data in a machine readable format, and to the metadata.
Since 2006, the IMF has been monitoring the countries observance of their SDDS undertakings on a regular basis and publishing the results of its country-specific assessments in annual observance reports.
Data, metadata and annual observance reports for Latvia and other countries, as well as additional information are available on the IMF website of the Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board.