International Monetary Fund (IMF)

The IMF is one of several international agencies that historically collect and process statistics on national accounting and balance of payments for its member countries, which include almost all sovereign member countries of the United Nations. The Fund’s statistics include some widely used databases in the academic arena, namely, Balance of Payments and International Investment Position (IIP) Statistics, External Debt Statistics, Government Finance Statistics, International Financial Statistics (IFS) Online Service, World Economic Outlook Databases, etc. International Financial Statistics is a standard source of international statistics on all aspects of international and domestic finance; it contains time series data from 1948 and provides data on exchange rates, international liquidity, international banking, money and banking, interest rates, prices, production, international transactions, government accounts, and national accounts.

The IMF, jointly with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the World Bank, disseminates data on external debt, which are obtained primarily from creditor and market sources. The data cover the external debt of developing and transition countries and territories, and also include statistics on international reserves. See http://www.imfstatistics.org/imf/.