The global crisis has unveiled deep data gaps that officials must close to make effective decisions, European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet said today.
'The financial crisis has revealed information gaps that we have to close while also preparing ourselves for future challenges,' Trichet told delegates to an ECB conference in Frankfurt that coincides with tomorrow's World Statistics Day.
The euro zone was rocked last year when Greece revealed deep flaws in its accounting that also drove up the cost of borrowing for countries like Ireland, Portugal and Spain and threatened the euro zone as a whole.
'We have seen that the potential for loss of credibility affects the entire union,' Trichet said.
Greek central bank governor George Provopoulos added that 'information gaps have played a role in the unfolding of financial crises in the past,' pointing in particular to the 1990s Latin American crisis.
The ECB chief said that more information, including detailed data on insurance companies and pension funds would be published from June 2011 onwards as part of 'very tangible prgress in the area of monetary and financial statistics.'
Such data 'are central to the foundations of public and private sector decision-making throughout our societies, and I would say today much more than before, at least when I draw the lesson from the recent financial crisis,' he concluded.
