IMF information more available

By Shailendra J. Anjaria

HONG KONG (JP): The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has long disseminated considerable information to the press and the public on its activities.

Yet the degree of openness about its work with individual member countries is necessarily tempered by the need to maintain sufficient confidentiality so as not to jeopardize the candor and comprehensiveness of policy discussions and so as not to contribute to market scares.

For this reason, the IMF has traditionally applied strict confidentiality to two core areas of its work: annual consultations with member countries on their exchange rates and macroeconomic policies; and negotiations of conditions for providing financial support for national economic programs.

But in recent years, the IMF has sought ways to increase public understanding of key economic policy issues while preserving confidentiality where it is essential. The result has been a steady increase in the information and documents released publicly by the IMF, with the pace picking up substantially of late.

For the first time, interested individuals and organizations can now tap into cyberspace or obtain in written form vital data and analyses prepared in the course of the IMF's country consultations and program negotiations.

Why the change?

* First, the financial crises in Mexico in 1994/1995 and in east Asia this summer have underscored the need for timely, accurate, and comprehensive data reporting by member countries. In a world of sizable -- sometimes extremely volatile -- private capital flows, financial markets must be able to respond more continuously and smoothly to economic developments if dramatic corrections are to be avoided.

* Second, both the member countries and the IMF have increasingly come to recognize the benefits of better public explanations of critical economic issues and the need for reforms. After all, a fuller understanding by the public for the need for sound economic policies can only increase their acceptance, thereby enhancing the prospects for their sustained implementation.

* Third, the IMF has been responding to rising expectations on the part of the public for national and international organizations to be more open and transparent.

Exactly what are the new initiatives? Four key ones stand out.

* Establishing New Data Standards.

An important step post-Mexico toward improving transparency was the establishment in 1996 of standards to guide countries in publishing a regular and timely flow of comprehensive economic and financial data. The goal: to reduce surprises for markets and aid policymakers in implementing sound economic policies.

Market participants and the general public can now access a bulletin board maintained by the IMF at a World Wide Web site on the Internet (http://dsbb.imf.org) that describes the statistical practices of countries and territorial entities subscribing to the Special Data Dissemination Standard -- a voluntary standard aimed at providing guidance to countries participating in international financial markets, or aspiring to do so.

At this point, 42 countries or territorial entities have signed up, representing a mix of industrial and emerging market economies. And since April 1997, electronic links have been established that allow data users to move quickly between the bulletin board and the actual data maintained by subscribers on the Internet.

These links are now in place for nine subscribers (Canada, Hong Kong, China, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, and Turkey) and more are expected.

* Releasing Policy Documentation.

Since 1994, the IMF has released over 360 background papers on recent economic developments in individual countries, thus disseminating information and analysis assembled for the IMF's executive board's use during annual country consultations.

In recent years, the IMF has also started to encourage countries to publish summary statements by the staff issued to the authorities at the end of such consultations -- and a number of countries have done so.

The same applies to statements of governments' policy intentions (or letters of intent) submitted by national authorities when they request IMF financing.

* Publishing executive board country assessments.

One of the latest initiatives, taken in May 1997, is the dissemination of Press Information Notices (PINs). Through this vehicle the public is able, for the first time, to obtain a sense of the ongoing deliberations of the IMF's executive board regarding a country's economic policies.

This is a marked advance in the transparency of the IMF's monitoring role, as these summaries are now far more complete and far more timely than anything previously available.

The PINs include a background section containing factual information on the member's economy, along with the IMF's assessment of the member's economic prospects and policies (as reflected in the executive board's discussion of the staff report for the annual country consultation).

The release of these notices is voluntary -- that is, at the discretion of the relevant country -- but already nearly two dozen such notices have been released.

* Putting the IMF on the Internet.

Finally, to make it easier for an increasingly sophisticated public to obtain information quickly, the IMF has established a web site on the Internet (http://www.inf.org).

The contents of the site are fully indexed, cross-referenced, and searchable, and users' comments are invited. Users can access a wealth of institutional information and data, including not only the Publications Catalog but also the full text of publications such as the latest annual report, the biweekly IMF Survey (the IMF's journal of record), the quarterly Finance and Development, and staff research published in Working Papers and Papers on Policy Analysis and Assessment.

The new wealth of information, combined with easy accessibility, should help open up the IMF to greater public scrutiny -- and in the process, it is hoped, advance the debate on how the world's nations can derive the greatest benefit from open capital markets and globalization.

The writer is director of the External Relations Department, IMF.