Zambia: Technical Assistance Report-Report on Data Quality Assessment for Public Sector Debt Statistics (September 30–October 4, 2024)

This report discusses the findings and recommendations of the 2024 assessment of the data quality of the public sector debt statistics (PSDS) of the Republic of Zambia against the IMF’s Data Quality Assessment Framework (DQAF) for PSDS. The assessment was undertaken as part of a project to strengthen the quality of public sector debt in select African countries, funded by the Government of Japan. The December 2023 DSA, assessed Zambia’s debt risk as in debt distress. This followed Zambia’s default on its sovereign Eurobonds in 2020 and the accumulation of arrears to both official bilateral and other commercial external creditors. As a result, the authorities have made significant efforts to strengthen public debt management including establishing Public Debt Management Act, 2022, and the operationalization of the Debt Management Office. Zambia’s PSDS have improved significantly in the last two years, consistent with the strong and sustained commitment of the government to improve debt data transparency and accountability. The report notes strengths in the legal framework and institutional arrangements underpinning the compiled and reported PSDS and finds the disseminated statistics to be broadly reliable, transparent, and of good quality. Recommendations include expanding the sector coverage beyond the budgetary central government, transparently publishing reconciliations of stocks and flows and a more detailed breakdown of arrears and making the PSDS more widely available in machine readable formats, including through the National Summary Data Page (NSDP) and joint IMF-World Bank Quarterly Public Sector Debt statistics database (QPSD).