Having met some tough conditions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to come under its Enhanced General Data Dissemination System (e-GDDS), Nigeria has established a one-stop publication vehicle, which now makes it easier for data users to access essential macroeconomic and financial data on the country.
With this development, Nigeria becomes the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to satisfy the IMF e-GDDS requirements and subsequently launch its operations in real time.
Publication of essential macroeconomic data through the new NSDP would provide national policy makers, 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, the IMF noted in a note in its website.
Nigeria’s one-stop data shop was established following a mission of the IMF Statistics Department visited Abuja in February to assist the authorities with the implementation of the e-DDS which was endorsed by the Executive Board in May 2015.
The mission supported the development of the National Summary Data Page (NSDP), which would be posted on the National Bureau of Statistics website, utilizing the Open Data Platform installed with the support of the African Development Bank.
According to the IMF, “Making this information easily accessible in both human and machine-readable formats, and based on an Advance Release Calendar will allow all users to have simultaneous access to timely data and will bring greater data transparency.”
In an interview, Yemi Kale, Nigeria’s statistician general, told BusinessDay that the IMF’s criteria for using this platform included transparency, quality, accuracy, timeliness and reliability of data and that for Nigeria to maintain the data page, it must at all times keep to all these requirements.
“This shows how well the Nigerian Statistical system has evolved,” Kale told BusinessDay after the launch of the platform.
He said as a key participant in the e-DDS project, Nigeria was required to provide key macroeconomic statistical information covering 15 data categories along with their respective sources.
It also uploads for the first time, the metadata, which is an explanation of the methodology on how the data was arrived at.
The data categories are National Accounts, Consumer Price Index, General Government Operations, Central Government operations, and Central Government Gross Debt, Depository Corporations Survey and Central Bank survey.
Others categories of data to be provided are interest rate, stock markets, balance of payments, external debt, officials reserves assets, merchandise trade, international investment position and exchange rate.
He said four key agencies of government would be responsible for implementing the new platform- the NBS, Central Bank of Nigeria, Office of the Accountant General of the Federation and Federal Ministry of Finance.
Each of the affected agencies is expected to upload its datasets in an open data platform, which is to be linked to the National Summary a Data page (NSDP) domiciled in NBS.
“The e-DDS is all part of Nigerian Statistical attempt to improve local production and dissemination of data in the country,” Kale further explained.
“Most of the time people complain that there is no data in Nigeria but you find that most of the time, it is not even that there is no data but how to access and find it.
“But this new platform would enable users to access. In line with the statistical Act, NBS is meant to be a one-stop repository of data in Nigeria, national data bank.
He said the platform also makes it easier to harmonise the data calendars such that the country now have a national harmonized macro economic calendar.
He said this macroeconomic data is the first stage and that the second stage would capture socio-economic data like health, education etc.
“The e-DDS would also help create more confidence for Nigerian statistical system from because international companies that use Nigerian data and of course boost investments,” he said.
The NBS is the manager and Kale assured that they would ensure that that coordination works.
