![]() This is a win-win as the international community benefits from the public good of better global assessments, while developing countries strengthen their statistical expertise and can harness stronger data. We must also give due credit to those countries that provide additional support to developing countries-including through the IMF’s ‘Data for Decisions’ Fund -as they build out their capacity to collect, analyze, and address these data gaps. Here, I congratulate the G20 for its leadership – and the work of the Data Gaps Initiative should serve as a pathfinder for other countries seeking to close their own gaps. Second, better data means investing in the infrastructure and capacity of collection agencies.Įnhancing data infrastructure involves establishing robust data collection systems, strengthening national statistical agencies, and integrating new indicators into existing frameworks. ![]() Given the urgent need to tackle climate change, tracking progress on a more regular timely basis would enable policy makers to understand the measures that work best, and where course corrections are needed. In other words, policymakers need official statistics that are broader, more detailed, and more frequent - including a range of household distributional income and wealth measures and climate indicators.Ĭountries regularly update their Paris Agreement climate action plans for cutting emissions, but official data on these reductions are usually published with low frequency and much delay-annually, with a lag of 12 to 24 months. Here I would quote then-Senator Robert Kennedy, who said: "GDP does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play" What’s more, they don’t show a complete picture. While they capture key elements of the economic story, they also conceal significant differences across household groups. The key aggregated data we publish each month, quarter, and year – such as GDP, government transfers, the Balance of Payments – are simply that: aggregates and averages. What should be done? Let me point to three priorities.įirst, I would echo the G20 in encouraging countries to go beyond gross domestic product in their national statistics. This impedes our ability to develop and monitor policies-from measures to incentivize cuts in emissions, to regulation that mitigates the risks of rapid financial innovation or helps boost financial inclusion. In other words, data sharpens how we understand the economic and financial implications of the world around us-and is particularly important for tackling new and emerging issues like climate change, financial innovation and changes to wealth and income distributions.īut there are still gaps in our data. Just think – data tells us while global inequality has been declining since the 1990s, more than half of the countries and close to 90 percent of advanced economies have seen an increase within country income inequality.ĭata tells us the number of registered mobile money agents has almost doubled worldwide between 20, mostly driven by increases in Africa and Asia.Īnd data tells us a single drought in Africa can lower a country’s medium-term economic growth potential by 1 percentage point. Policy advice must be based on hard data – and this is at the heart of decision-making for the IMF and our counterparts in central banks and finance ministries. And walking through most major cities will reveal stark inequalities.īut intuition and personal experience is not enough. We experience the digital finance revolution when we buy a coffee with an iPhone or send friends and family money through an app. Storms are more frequent and more violent. Winters are milder, and summers are hotter. Why? Because intuitively, we know that climate change is happening because we see the effects all around us. If we think back to that era of lockdowns and social distancing, it might seem remarkable to be thinking about future data needs at such a time of crisis.īut to me, it underlines the criticality data for policy decisions, especially in times of crisis and uncertainty that we have experienced recently. The Data Gaps Initiative was launched in 2009 by the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors to close data gaps that were identified in the wake of the global financial crisis.įast forward to 2021 and – in the midst of the pandemic – the G20 initiated a new phase, covering climate change, household distributional information, data access, fintech and financial inclusion. Let me start today by taking a step back to think about why data matters in our current context. Welcome to the IMF, and welcome to the G20 Data Gaps Initiative Global Conference. Ladies, gentlemen, and distinguished guests
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