The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is assisting the Albanian government with the creation of a National Summary Data Page (NSDP) for macroeconomic data.
A team from the Statistics Department of the IMF has been assisting the government over the last few months to install the system, which would gather all macroeconomic data of the country, such as unemployment, interest rates, etc. on a single website.
Publication of essential macroeconomic data through the new NSDP provides national policymakers and domestic and international stakeholders, including investors and rating agencies, with easy access to information that the IMF’s Executive Board has identified as critical for monitoring economic conditions and policies. Making this information easily accessible in both human and machine-readable formats, and in accordance with an Advance Release Calendar, allows all users to have simultaneous access to timely data and brings greater data transparency.
It remains to be seen whether this project will in fact be completely implemented. In spite of the legal frameworks that are in place, the Albanian government scores badly in terms of transparency, and often uses conflicting interpretations of macro-economic data to its advantage. The successful establishment of the NSDP according to IMF standards would considerably weaken to possibility of the government to use economic data for propaganda purposes.
Recently, Exit has reported on another case in which the government hides information from the public on purpose: the Agency for Territorial Development systematically fails to report data concerning urban planning, including the minutes of meetings presided by Prime Minister Edi Rama. The success of the NSDP will therefore depend on a change in government culture toward more transparency.
