In 2022, Serbia introduced a new budget system law with fiscal rules based on general government, as defined in the international statistical standards. The Serbian Ministry of Finance is committed to upgrading their fiscal reporting so as to report against these fiscal rules by 2025. Against this background, the International Monetary Fund’s Statistics Department has provided technical assistance during 2022 and 2023 to assist the MOF to extend and improve their monthly government finance statistics, in accordance with the Government Finance Statistics Manual 2014, to cover all materially significant general government units.

A follow-up technical assistance (TA) mission to the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) was conducted remotely during 12 days over the period of April 26–July 15, 20211. This activity was part of Cambodia’s participation in the Japan-funded Government Finance Statistics (GFS) and Public Sector Debt Statistics (PSDS) Project for selected Asian countries (JSA3)2. The mission liaised with Mr. Alexandros Mourmouras, Director of the Capacity Development Office in Thailand (CDOT), Mr. Rifaat Basanti, the IMF Regional JSA3 GFS/PSDS Project Manager, Ms. Delphine Anne Moretti, the IMF Regional Public Financial Management (PFM) Advisor for Southeast Asia, and Mr. Sean Craig, Macroeconomic Advisor – all in the CDOT, and Mr. Yasuhisa Ojima, the IMF’s Resident Representative for Cambodia. The mission would like to thank the authorities for their excellent collaboration and support.

The A remote technical assistance (TA) mission to the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) was conducted during ten days over the period of August 31–November 30, 2020.1 This activity was part of Cambodia’s participation in the Japan-funded Government Finance Statistics (GFS) and Public Sector Debt Statistics (PSDS) Project for selected Asian countries (JSA3)2. The overall goal of the JSA3 Project is to assist the MEF in strengthening compilation and dissemination of fiscal data in line with the GFS Manual 2014 and the PSDS: Guide for Compilers and Users to support macro-fiscal surveillance and decision making. The mission liaised with Mr. Alexandros Mourmouras, Director of the Capacity Development Office in Thailand (CDOT), Mr. Rifaat Basanti, the IMF Regional JSA3 GFS/PSDS Project Manager, Mr. Suhas Joshi, the IMF Regional Treasury Advisor—both in the CDOT, Mr. Yasuhisa Ojima, the IMF’s Resident Representative for Cambodia, and Ms. Magdalena Tomczynska-Smith, the IMF’s Budget Planning Advisor for Cambodia. The mission would like to thank the authorities for their excellent collaboration and support (Appendix I lists the main official contacts).

At the request of the Suriname authorities, a remote technical assistance (TA) mission took place during December 6–17, 2021. The mission was conducted in coordination with the IMF’s Western Hemisphere Department. The main objective of the mission was to assist the Ministry of Finance and Planning (MFP) and the Central Bank of Suriname (CBS) to improve the quality of the Government Finance Statistics (GFS) in view of the IMF program. The main tasks were to (i) conduct a diagnostic assessment of the current GFS and public debt compilation process,(ii) explain and reduce statistical discrepancies, (iii) analyze data on arrears and reassess their treatment in GFS, (iv) review the integration of stocks and flows of the gross debt; and (v) update the public sector institutional table, and (vi) deliver a workshop on GFSM 2014 framework and (PSDS).

The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Statistics Department (STA) and Fiscal Affairs Department (FAD) provided technical assistance (TA) on government finance statistics (GFS) and public sector debt statistics (PSDS) to the Ministry of Finance (MOF) of the Arab Republic of Egypt during July 4–17, 2023. This was the first such mission since 2017 and the focus was on assisting the Egyptian MOF to identify the necessary processes and systems required to facilitate the production of high-quality fiscal statistics, compliant with the latest international statistical standards (as per the Government Finance Statistics Manual 2014) both with respect to coverage and presentation.

The mission welcomes the progress made by the RK in improving the quality of GFS. The Ministry of Finance has taken into account several recommendations of the previous mission on increasing transparency, improving data quality, and regarding the channels used to provide GFS. In particular, updated bridge tables are used when generating statistics, National Fund (NF) data are recorded separately from national budget (NB) data, and GFS are disseminated through the IMF Integrated Data Collection System.

A technical assistance (TA) mission on Government Finance Statistics (GFS) and Public Sector Debt Statistics (PSDS) visited the city of Praia, Republic of Cabo Verde, from July 22 to August 2, 2019, with the aim of putting more and better-quality fiscal data —particularly on PSDS — in the hands of public decision makers. The mission was funded by the Data for Decisions (D4D) fund under module 1 on fiscal data including debt.

A remote follow-up technical assistance (TA) mission on government finance statistics (GFS) and public sector debt statistics (PSDS) was conducted, with the assistance of the Department of Finance (DOF), during October 19–27, 2020. The mission made further progress in implementing recommendations of previous TA missions in the area of GFS and PSDS. The mission was undertaken within the GFS/PSDS TA project for Asia, funded by the Government of Japan (JSA3).

The mission to Armenia took place between September 27–October 8, 2021 to assist the authorities to improve their Government Finance Statistics (GFS) compilation practices. The technical assistance (TA) mission was conducted by Ms. Ivana Jablonská and Mr. David Bailey at the request of the Ministry of Finance (MOF) and with the support of the IMF ́s Middle East and Central Asia Department (MCD). The main objectives of the mission were to assist the authorities in finalizing a comprehensive sectorized list of all public sector units —known as, the public sector institutional table (PSIT) — and in compiling annual general government GFS data for 2020.

At the request of the Ministry of the Economy and Finance (Ministère de l’Économie et des Finances (MEF)) and in consultation with the African Department (AFR) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the IMF Statistics Department (STA) carried out a remote mission on government finance statistics (GFS) from November 29–December 10, 2021. The purpose of the mission was to continue to support the Malagasy authorities in their work to adopt international standards of the Government Finance Statistics Manual 2014 (GFSM 2014) for their GFS. The mission would like to thank the Research Directorate (Direction des Études (DE)) of the Directorate General of the Treasury (Direction Générale du Trésor (DGT)) for its close collaboration and more specifically for the timely communication of the required documents, which was essential to the success of the mission given the remote working conditions.