An important lesson from the crisis is the importance of having appropriate and timely data. Before the crisis, the availability of data that are essential for risk assessments and economic management was woefully inadequate. GDP data were only available on an annual basis and with a time lag of a year or so. Regularly available quarterly data or monthly data were extremely limited. and critically important data on short-term foreign debt were hardly available at all. In face at that time the adequacy of foreign reserves was still being viewed simply by foreign currency requirements on the trade side (e.g. the number of months of imports). The importance of having enough reserves to back up the amount of short-term foreign debt is now generally accepted. However, before the crisis, data on short-term foreign debt were not collected in any systematic manner.
Significant improvements have been made since then. Many monthly and quarterly data series are now available on a timely basis. A quarterly GDP series has been developed and is now available with a one-quarter lag. Vast amount of monthly official data are now accessible for downloading through the Internet from public agencies, particularly the BOT where more than 100 data tables are available online and the data are updated every month. The availability of these data enable non-public sector organizations to better track economic developments and make accurate risk assessments. This leads to a more balanced view compared with if most of the information is only available to government and public sector organizations.