Discovering Datasets

Dataflows

The IMF publishes hundreds of separate datasets through its API. In SDMX — the standard the API speaks — a dataset is called a dataflow, and every request has to name one. So before you can fetch any data, you need to:

Get the list of available dataflows
Find the ID of the one you want

That ID is the first argument to every other function in imfp.

Listing Dataflows

imf_get_dataflows returns the full catalogue as a tidy DataFrame:

import imfp

dataflows = imfp.imf_get_dataflows()
dataflows.shape

(222, 7)

Each row describes one dataset:

Column	Meaning
`id`	The dataflow ID, e.g. `PCPS`. This is what you pass to the other functions.
`name`	Human-readable title.
`description`	Longer prose description, where the IMF provides one.
`version`	Version of the dataflow definition.
`agency`	The IMF department that publishes it, e.g. `IMF.STA`.
`structure`	URN of the datastructure definition that backs it.
`last_updated`	When the dataset was last refreshed.

dataflows[["id", "name", "agency", "last_updated"]].head()

	id	name	agency	last_updated
0	MFS_DC_2026_MAY_VINTAGE	Monetary and Financial Statistics (MFS), Depos...	IMF.STA	2026-05-27T14:51:58.879098Z
1	MCDREO	Middle East and Central Asia Regional Economic...	IMF.MCD	2025-10-16T00:20:10.062512Z
2	WHDREO_2025_OCT_VINTAGE	Western Hemisphere Regional Economic Outlook (...	IMF.WHD	2026-04-13T17:42:08.662531Z
3	PCPS	Primary Commodity Price System (PCPS)	IMF.RES	2025-06-16T17:59:44.643694Z
4	MFS_DC	Monetary and Financial Statistics (MFS), Depos...	IMF.STA	2025-11-27T16:58:36.728552Z

Finding the Dataset You Want

Because the result is an ordinary DataFrame, searching it is an ordinary pandas filter. Search the name column for a keyword:

dataflows[dataflows["name"].str.contains("Commodity", case=False, na=False)][
    ["id", "name"]
]

	id	name
3	PCPS	Primary Commodity Price System (PCPS)
114	CTOT	Commodity Terms of Trade (CTOT)

The description column often contains terms the title does not, so it is worth searching too:

matches = dataflows[
    dataflows["description"].str.contains("balance of payments", case=False, na=False)
]
matches[["id", "name"]].head()

	id	name
10	BOP	Balance of Payments (BOP)
41	COFER	Currency Composition of Official Foreign Excha...
73	BOP_2026_FEB_VINTAGE	Balance of Payments (BOP) 2026 February
128	IL	International Liquidity (IL)
173	ITS	International Trade in Services (ITS)

Checking How Current a Dataset Is

last_updated tells you when each dataset was last refreshed, which is useful when you are deciding whether a series is current enough for your purposes:

import pandas as pd

recent = dataflows.dropna(subset=["last_updated"]).copy()
recent["last_updated"] = pd.to_datetime(recent["last_updated"], format="mixed")
recent.sort_values("last_updated", ascending=False)[["id", "name", "last_updated"]].head()

	id	name	last_updated
206	IRFCL	International Reserves and Foreign Currency Li...	2026-06-19 15:17:41.650334+00:00
122	ISORA_LATEST_DATA_PUB	ISORA Latest Data	2026-06-15 17:13:23.041621+00:00
44	GPT	IMF Global Policy Tracker: How Countries are R...	2026-06-12 16:15:44.521971+00:00
220	FM	Fiscal Monitor (FM)	2026-06-03 16:00:56.895956+00:00
7	MFS_OFC_2026_MAY_VINTAGE	Monetary and Financial Statistics (MFS), Other...	2026-05-27 15:19:21.834692+00:00

Reading the Dataflow ID

The id column is the value you pass everywhere else:

pcps = dataflows[dataflows["id"] == "PCPS"]
pcps[["id", "name", "agency", "version"]]

	id	name	agency	version
3	PCPS	Primary Commodity Price System (PCPS)	IMF.RES	9.0.0

Note the agency. Different IMF departments publish through the same API but do not all support the same features — in particular, only IMF.STA currently honors server-side time filtering. imf_get warns you when you ask for a time window that the publishing agency will ignore. See Fetching Data.

Next Step

With a dataflow ID in hand, the next step is finding out how that dataset can be filtered. See Dimensions and Codes.