To ensure accountability and dependability, statistical agencies should have a transparent and complete Advance Release Calendar (ARC) for the release of statistics publications. The ARC enables users to know when to expect key statistics as well as providing assurance that no users have preferential access to information.
Adherence to the ARC is important for enhancing the credibility of statistical agencies and is thus a key benchmark used for assessing the quality of national statistics. For it to be useful, the commitment to adherence must be credible, and this may be undermined if there are persistent slippages in maintaining the regular production of the required statistics. Therefore, an institution should not commit to the ARC until it is ready.
In Botswana, the Bank of Botswana is working together with the Statistics Botswana (SB) and the Ministry of Finance (MoF) to develop the ARC to a standard that meets the requirements for subscription to the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). At present the dates shown on the the ARC included on this website should be treated as indicative of the expected time of publication, rather than a firm commitment to release on that date.