Washington, DC – November 7, 2025: The International Monetary Fund (IMF), on behalf of the Inter-Agency Group on Economic and Financial Statistics (IAG) and the Financial Stability Board (FSB), has published the Third Progress Report on the implementation of the Third Phase of the G20 Data Gaps Initiative (DGI-3).
The report provides an update on the work undertaken since August 2024 to address critical data gaps that impede policymakers' ability to develop economic and financial policy to support inclusive growth, leverage opportunities and manage challenges related to financial innovation, and address macroeconomic climate-related challenges. The G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (FMCBGs) acknowledged the progress made under the initiative in their October 2025 Chair's Summary .
The report highlights that:
- In 2025, an increased number of G20 and participating economies reported either having closed or are actively addressing the data gaps across several Recommendations. Notable progress was registered with respect to Energy Accounts (Recommendation 2), with fourteen economies now compiling and disseminating Energy Accounts as outlined in Recommendation 2, while nine others indicated ongoing efforts to bridge the data gap. Across other Recommendations, several economies provided essential data inputs to support the compilation of targeted indicators, participated in data collection rounds, and developed source data—reflecting broader momentum and a strong commitment to closing the identified data gaps.
- The G20 and participating economies' progress has been fostered by the important work of the DGI Task Teams. They have finalized several methodological frameworks and reporting templates, identified key source data, and developed open-source processing tools—effectively equipping the economies with the instruments needed to close data gaps. In parallel, the Task Teams have enhanced capacity through targeted workshops and webinars tailored to specific Recommendations.
- The IAG has played a key role in developing a suite of open-source tools to facilitate the G20 and participating economies to close critical data gaps more efficiently and collaboratively. These tools—adaptable to national contexts—leverage open-source and existing global datasets to offer practical and efficient solutions to address some selected data gaps. Among others, these include a statistical tool for aligning household-level microdata with macroeconomic aggregates; tools to develop air emissions accounts from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change inventory data; and a maturity assessment framework to help statistical organizations evaluate the effectiveness of their data access and sharing practices. These innovations directly alleviate some of the challenges, including limited technical capacity and resource constraints, reported by economies.
For the next year, the DGI-3 workplan prioritizes finalization or refinement of methodological frameworks and reporting templates—drawing, in some cases, on insights from test data collection exercises—as well as developing and disseminating (experimental) estimates. To further facilitate progress, the work program continues to include a global conference planned for June 2026, thematic workshops, webinars, consultations, and bilateral meetings—all essential for this collaborative global initiative. The IMF will, in close cooperation with the IAG and the FSB, continue to monitor the implementation of the DGI-3 and report progress to the G20 FMCBGs, annually.
Notes
In October 2009, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and the IMF published The Financial Crisis and Information Gaps report, in response to the G20 FMCBGs' request to explore information gaps and provide proposals to strengthen data collection. The report, which outlined recommendations to address identified data gaps, was endorsed by the G20 FMCBGs and led to the first phase of the Data Gaps Initiative (DGI-1). In September 2015, DGI-2 was launched with the objective of ensuring regular collection and dissemination of reliable and timely statistics for policy use. The DGI-2 concluded in December 2021. In 2021, the G20 FMCBGs endorsed the concept note for the third phase of the initiative (DGI-3). The G20 welcomed the DGI-3 workplan in both the G20 FMCBGs October 2022 meeting and the G20 Bali Leaders' Declaration in November 2022, and tasked the IMF, FSB, and the Inter-Agency Group on Economic and Financial Statistics (IAG) to begin work on filling the identified data gaps across 14 recommendations.
The member agencies of the Inter-Agency Group on Economic and Financial Statistics (IAG) are the Bank for International Settlements, European Central Bank, Eurostat, IMF (Chair), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, STATAFRIC, the United Nations, and the World Bank. The Financial Stability Board (FSB) Secretariat also contributes to the IAG.
