The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is an inter-governmental international financial organization. The IMF eLibrary is a network platform published by the International Monetary Fund for various materials such as books, periodicals, work reports, and national reports. It provides online access services for users in real time. IMF collects, processes, publishes a series of data and statistical information on the IMF lending, exchange rates and other economic and financial indicators. It is one of the most authoritative sources of economic data and analysis reports in the world. The main ones are:
• International Financial Statistics: Providing about 32,000 kinds of international financial statistics and national domestic finance for more than 200 countries, including balance of payments data, international financial flows, money and banking, data exchange and interest rates, and product prices, international trade, government accounts, national Accounting, population data, etc. The time span covers the period from 1948 to the present.
• Balance of Payments Statistics: It has about 100,000 quarterly and annual statistics in more than 170 countries and territories, including comprehensive or subdivided standardized and analytical data. The main contents cover international economic and trade data, such as overall commodities, services, industrial trade; international capital transfers, capital transfers of creditor's rights and debt; data of international payments etc. The time span covers 1948 to date.
• Direction of Trade Statistics: Provides about 100,000 bilateral or multilateral commodity import and export statistics for more than 190 countries and regions. Time covers the period from 1980 to present.
• Government Finance Statistics: Provides data on taxation, consumption, planning budgets, additional budgets, social insurance, and comprehensive financial accounting for the central government of 145 member states. The time span covers the period from 1990 to the present.