Italy adheres to SDDS Plus, the new standards set by the International Monetary Fund for the dissemination of economic and financial data, which supplement the Special Data Dissemination Standard established in 1996. To achieve this result and produce the data of interest for the system, the Bank of Italy, the Ministry of Economy and Finance and Istat, who coordinated the initiative, have worked closely since the pilot phase of the project.
The new dissemination standards, set by the IMF in 2012 in order to improve the perception of risks in the financial sector, of transnational financial links and of vulnerability to shocks of different economies, provide that information and support documentation should be presented more effectively, facilitating comparisons and analyses at the international level.
Complying with the strict standards of transparency, quality and timeliness of national statistics under the new dissemination system is, therefore, particularly important for countries with a significant weight in the global financial system.
Within SDDS Plus each Country has its own page (National Summary Data Page) that contains links to the most relevant and timely updated economic and financial information, while offering advanced solutions for data download and detailed descriptions of sources and methods used.
Italy’s National Summary Data Page can be accessed from the following address: http://www.istat.it/nsdp