Government Finance Statistics Yearbook 2014

The 2007–09 international financial crisis underscored the importance of reliable and timely statistics on the general government and public sectors. Government finance statistics are a basis for fiscal analysis and they play a vital role in developing and monitoring sound fiscal programs and in conducting surveillance of economic policies. The Government Finance Statistics Manual 2014 represents a major step forward in clarifying the standards for compiling and presenting fiscal statistics and strengthens the worldwide effort to improve public sector reporting and transparency.

Detailed annual data for Fund member governments are supplied on revenue income by source (tax, lending, bonds, etc.), and expenditure by sector (defense, education, health, etc.) for all levels of government (national, state, local). Topics covered include deficit/surplus or total financing, revenues or grants, expenditures, lending minus repayments, domestic financing, foreign financing, domestic debt or total debt, and foreign debt. The Yearbook provides data on budgetary operations, extra-budgetary operations, social security, and consolidated financial operations of central governments. A section of the Government Finance Statistics Yearbook is devoted to a cross-country comparison of data.

Detailed annual data for Fund member governments are supplied on revenue income by source (tax, lending, bonds, etc.), and expenditure by sector (defense, education, health, etc.) for all levels of government (national, state, local). Topics covered include deficit/surplus or total financing, revenues or grants, expenditures, lending minus repayments, domestic financing, foreign financing, domestic debt or total debt, and foreign debt. The Yearbook provides data on budgetary operations, extra-budgetary operations, social security, and consolidated financial operations of central governments. A section of the Government Finance Statistics Yearbook is devoted to a cross-country comparison of data.

This annual publication provides detailed data on transactions in revenue, expense, net acquisition of assets and liabilities, other economic flows, and balances of assets and liabilities of general government and its subsectors. The data are compiled according to the framework of the 2014 Government Finance Statistics Manual, which provides for several summary measures of government fiscal performance.

The demand for high quality detailed public finance statistics covering a globally representative sample of countries has increased dramatically during the recent financial crisis. Due to the complexity of public finance statistics, however, such data tend to be either available in oversimplified high level aggregates and lacking in methodological transparency, or, available with a great level of detail and a unified methodological approach yet overly complicated to understand. The IMF’s Government Finance Statistics Yearbook (GFSY) withdata over an almost 40 year period for almost 140 countries is a valuable database but with a complex structure requiring some specialty knowledge that most data users do not have. The IMF's Statistics Department embarked on several initiatives to improve its accessibility. The purpose of this paper is to provide a non-technical overview of the methodology and advantages of the GFSY database and discussion of how the database is improving to better meet the needs of the user community.

The 2007–09 international financial crisis underscored the importance of reliable and timely statistics on the general government and public sectors. Government finance statistics are a basis for fiscal analysis and they play a vital role in developing and monitoring sound fiscal programs and in conducting surveillance of economic policies. The Government Finance Statistics Manual 2014 represents a major step forward in clarifying the standards for compiling and presenting fiscal statistics and strengthens the worldwide effort to improve public sector reporting and transparency.

This annual publication provides detailed data on transactions in revenue, expense, net acquisition of assets and liabilities, other economic flows, and balances of assets and liabilities of general government and its subsectors. The data are compiled according to the framework of the 2014 Government Finance Statistics Manual, which provides for several summary measures of government fiscal performance.

A useful but little known feature of the IMF’s Government Finance Statistics Yearbook (GFSY) is the information on the structure of governments. Institutional tables, included in the GFSY, provide detail on the central, state, and local levels of governments, social security, and extrabudgetary units. We refer to the main levels of government as GL1, GL2, and GL3 in ascending order of institutional coverage. We present maps of the various levels of government for 74 countries to illustrate the usefulness of this database and make it more accessible to users. The maps provide information about how centralized or decentralized government finances and employment are and their size relative to the overall economy. Government map data facilitate the monitoring of fiscal policy and fiscal rules.

The demand for high quality detailed public finance statistics covering a globally representative sample of countries has increased dramatically during the recent financial crisis. Due to the complexity of public finance statistics, however, such data tend to be either available in oversimplified high level aggregates and lacking in methodological transparency, or, available with a great level of detail and a unified methodological approach yet overly complicated to understand. The IMF’s Government Finance Statistics Yearbook shows fiscal data of around 140 countries following the Government Finance Statistics Manual 2001 framework. The associated database includes data series covering over an almost 40 year period. The IMF's Statistics Department embarked on several initiatives to improve its accessibility.