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Pacific Island Countries
July 2004

Technical assistance for statistical development gathers pace in Pacific Island GDDS member countries.

Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Vanuatu have committed to participate in the Pacific Regional General Data Dissemination System (GDDS) Project financed by the Japanese Fund for Technical Assistance in selected Fund activities. The Pacific Regional GDDS project, financed by the Japanese Fund for Technical Assistance in selected Fund activities, was launched for participating countries at a workshop hosted by the Pacific Financial Technical Assistance Centre (PFTAC) in Suva, Fiji in November 2002. At the time of the workshop, eight Pacific Island countries had committed to participation in the GDDS: Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Vanuatu. In November 2003, Samoa became the ninth country to join the project.

The objective of the multiyear project is to achieve a sustainable improvement in the capacity of participating countries' statistical systems to enable the production and dissemination of reliable, timely, and relevant official macroeconomic and sociodemographic statistics. The GDDS provides the framework for devising short- and longer-term development plans and guides the Fund in its provision of the most effective technical and other assistance to assist the countries to realize those plans.

The statistics advisor based at PFTAC in Suva is the GDDS Project Manager for the Pacific region. Since the GDDS launch, the advisor, in consultation with the GDDS Unit of the Fund's Statistics Department, has been working with a group of peripatetic statistical experts to assist participating countries to prepare their GDDS metadata and implement improvement plans. At the end of 2002 the metadata for one country, Fiji, had been finalized and posted on the IMF's website. Kiribati and Vanuatu were added in 2004. Special-purpose technical assistance missions were arranged by PFTAC during 2004 to complete the metadata for Tonga and Samoa. These metadata are now undergoing review prior to web-posting consultations with country authorities. In addition, metadata are nearing completion by Cook Islands, Palau, and Solomon Islands.

During the past 18 months, the GDDS project has financed a range of technical and other assistance for member countries, resulting in improvements to national accounts (Palau), balance of payments (Cook Islands, Fiji, Tonga, Vanuatu), and government finance statistics (Fiji and Vanuatu). General reviews of statistical systems and action plans have also been prepared for four countries.

GDDS: The Fund's GDDS is a framework for statistical development which provides guidance on good statistical practice, supplies tools to diagnose areas of the statistical system that require priority attention, and establishes processes to aid in the formulation and implementation of short-and longer-run development plans.
Metadata: GDDS metadata describe a country's current statistical practices and plans to make improvements in these practices, together with the associated need for assistance.