07 May 2013

Dissemination of data is crucial especially in a world experiencing rapid socio-economic growth.

Speaking at the data dissemination workshop facilitated by International Monetary Fund (IMF) on May 6, Bank of Botswana acting Governor, Mr Oduetse Motshidisi said the growth encapsulated challenges that statisticians were faced with.

He said statisticans needed to constantly track growth in terms of population, businesses, housing, transport, finance and other data. “Economic development in Africa is increasingly robust and diverse, no longer explained in straightforward terms of commodity dependency,” he said.

Mr Motshidisi said Botswana was considered to be among the first countries in Africa to subscribe to Special Data Dissemination Standards (SDDS). To that effect, in 2002, Botswana hosted the launch of the first stage of the regional General Data Dissemination (GDDS) project for Anglophone Africa.

“Since then, IMF has provided consistent, structured and valuable support, with the project now in in its third phase,” he said. He said the requirement for SDDS was an essential pre-requisite for informed policy decision.

“It is a fact that the capacity of national statistical offices in many cases remains severely constrained by inadequate resources, in financial and human terms,” he said. The mandate of the workshop was to help participants understand SDDS requirements for different sectors of statistics.

Once Botswana has fully subscribed to SDDS, she will be required to adhere to the agreed dissemination standards. Some of the standards cover punctually and with the prescribed periodicity and timeliness on a national webpage.

This will help improve the quality of country data by making it more internationally comparable, meaningful and ultimately more usable. ENDS