Data For Free

Big data is gaining traction. The IMF is offering all its databases free of charge from the beginning of this year:

IMF Offers Free Access to Its Online Economic Data

From the start of 2015, the IMF has made its online economic data available to everyone free of charge. Users have access to a wealth of

macroeconomic data covering all economic sectors of a large part of the IMF’s member countries.

This includes the International Financial Statistics (IFS), Balance of Payment Statistics (BOP/IIP), Government Finance Statistics (GFS), and Direction of Trade Statistics (DOTS) databases. These were all previously only available via subscription.

If you’re interested in Singapore, Singstat has also put its data online (warning: pdf link):

Free Access to More Data on the SingStat Website from 1 March 2015

Data users can look forward to free access to some 12,000 statistical data series on the SingStat website. The data series span across multiple topics within two broad themes, namely population and economy.

So what’s the big deal? It’s not so much that the data is free and online, but that its also readily accessible via visualisation and data downloads of historical time series.

DOS, here’s your next big project.