SDDS/QEDS Participants

The Quarterly External Debt Statistics (QEDS) database brings together detailed external debt data that are published individually by countries that subscribe to the IMF’s Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) as well as GDDS participating countries that are in a position to produce the external debt data prescribed by the SDDS. The participation of countries in the SDDS/QEDS database is voluntary. Currently, 58 SDDS subscribing countries and three GDDS countries have agreed to participate in this database.

Three set of tables were developed for collecting quarterly time series information on external debt (template for external debt data).

Gross External Debt Position ($ million)

The first set of tables is based on the SDDS prescribed external debt data category (table 1) and encouraged debt data categories (tables 2 and 3). Table 1 includes breakdowns of the total external debt position by sector, maturity, and instrument, and the two other tables gather data on the domestic-foreign currency breakdown of external debt and forward debt service schedule, respectively. The remaining sets of tables comprise supplementary statistics that go beyond the SDDS to provide further analytical presentations—particularly with respect to sectoral data—and facilitate cross country data analysis. Provision of data for table 1—the table based on the prescribed SDDS data category—by sector, maturity, and instrument is essential to participation.

With respect to the external debt data category, the SDDS prescribes the dissemination of quarterly data with a one-quarter lag covering four institutional sectors of the reporting economy (general government, monetary authorities, the banking sector, and other). Furthermore, the data are to be disaggregated by maturity—short-and long-term—and provided on an original maturity basis and by instrument as set out in the fifth edition of the Balance of Payments Manual (BPM5). In addition, the SDDS encourages countries to disseminate supplementary information on future debt-service payments, in which the principal and interest components are separately identified, twice yearly for the first four quarters and the following two semesters ahead, with a lag of one quarter. The data should also be broken down into sector–general government, monetary authorities, the banking sector, and other sectors. The dissemination of a domestic/foreign currency breakdown of external debt with quarterly periodicity and timeliness is encouraged.

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