Changes to the Bank of Italy's dissemination of selected statistics following the adoption of the SDDS Plus

Italy is in the group of countries that was first to adopt the International Monetary Fund’s new ‘Special Data Dissemination Standard Plus’ (SDDS Plus) for official macroeconomic statistics.

The new standard, which builds on the current SDDS, will be introduced on 18 February 2015.

To meet the requirements of the new SDDS Plus, changes are being made to the way the Bank disseminates statistical information which will enrich its statistical resources. In particular, the Statistical Database will become the main channel for the initial dissemination of data, while respecting the IMF’s coverage, periodicity, and timeliness requirements.

This will lead to:

  • the introduction of new data categories as envisaged by the new standard (see Table 1); more data categories will be added by the end of 2015
  • the publication of data in the form of time series, generally with a time span of at least five years
  • the replacement of the current SDDS reports (now published in  PDF format on the website in the section  ‘Statistics / Main indicators of the Italian economy’)  by tables in the Statistical Database (see Table 1)
  • the publication of most data categories in SDMX-ML format.

As a result, there will be some changes to the Statistics release schedule. SDDS reports will be discontinued after 18 February 2015; the report ‘Italy – Balance of payments’, due for release on that date, will not now be published. Balance of payments statistics for December 2014 can be found in the Supplement ‘Balance of Payments and International Investment Position’, to be published on 24 February 2015.