On May 17, 2010 Georgia subscribed to the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS), which is a major step forward for development of statistical potential of the country. This standard implies the publication of economic and financial data of the country on the National Summary Data Page (http://www.nbg.ge/index.php?m=481&lng=eng). Besides this, so called metadata – comprehensive information on the practice of production and dissemination of statistics in the country, which will be available on the IMF’s website (http://dsbb.imf.org/Pages/SDDS/CtyCtgList.aspx?ctycode=GEO) – and advance release calendar (http://nbg.gov.ge/index.php?m=485&lng=eng) will be published.

The above mentioned step is the joint decision of the official producers of statistics in the country – the National Statistics Office of Georgia, the National bank of Georgia and the Ministry of Finance of Georgia.

The aim of the Special Data Dissemination Standard is to enhance international transparency of economic and financial data which will ensure realization of balanced macroeconomic policy and trust and interest of potential foreign economic partners and investors for the given country. The Special Data Dissemination Standard facilitates members in participation on capital markets. It is well known that around the world market participants use the factor of subscription to SDDS by particular country in risk assessment, in a sense that availability of statistical data reduces economic and financial risks. The research provides evidence that subscription to SDDS reduces the cost of the capital from international capital markets by about 20 percent both for public and private sectors of the country.