G20 leaders welcome Data Gaps Initiative covering climate change and fintech

The work plan covers 14 recommendations that address priority policy needs in the areas of: (i) climate change; (ii) distribution of household income and wealth; (iii) fintech and financial inclusion; and (iv) access to private sources of data and administrative data, and data sharing to improve the timeliness and granularity of official statistics.

The G20 leaders, in the G20 Bali Leaders’ Statement, welcomed the DGI’s work plan and asked “the IMF, FSB and IAG to begin work to fill these data gaps and report back on progress in the second half of 2023, noting that the Goals are ambitious, and the delivery must take into account national statistical capacity, priorities and circumstances in the country, as well as avoid overlap and duplication at international level.”

Following the statement, IMF Deputy Managing Director Bo Li noted that “the IMF looks forward to working with the IAG, the FSB Secretariat and participating economies to advance work in these critical policy areas. Global political action is needed to address the escalating climate crisis. Monitoring progress towards meeting climate targets and tracking developments in financial innovation and financial inclusion are necessary for decision-makers to take decisive action to strengthen resilience and promote inclusive growth.

The Data Gaps Initiative will build on the close cooperation between the participating economies and international organizations established during phase 2 of the Data Gaps Initiative (DGI-2), and explicit support from the G20. The recommendations are expected to be implemented within five years of launch. As with previous phases, implementation will be monitored and published on the DGI website starting in 2023.

Background

In October 2009, the FSB and IMF published The Financial Crisis and Information Gaps, a report responding to a request by the G20 ministers and governors to explore information gaps and make appropriate proposals to strengthen data collection. The report, which set out a number of recommendations to address identified data gaps, was endorsed by G20 ministers and governors and led to the first phase of work (DGI-1). In September 2015, it was agreed that the DGI work should continue into a second phase
(DGI-2).

The main objective of DGI-2 was to implement regular collection and dissemination of reliable and timely statistics for policy use. DGI-2 also included new recommendations to reflect the changing needs of decision makers. The 20 recommendations were gathered under three main headings: (i) monitoring of risks in the financial sector; (ii) vulnerabilities, interconnections and spillovers; and (iii) data sharing and communication of official statistics. DGI-2 maintained continuity with the DGI-1 recommendations, while setting more specific targets for the G20 economies to compile and disseminate minimum common datasets for these recommendations. DGI-2 was completed in December 2021 and the report was published on the DGI website.

The member agencies of the Inter-Agency Group on Economic and Financial Statistics (IAG) are the Bank for International Settlements, the European Central Bank, Eurostat, the IMF (leader), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United Nations and the World Bank. The FSB participates in the IAG meetings.