Lima, Jan. 21 08.- The Heads of the Statistics Institutes of the Andean Community countries announced that efforts at the Community level, which up to the moment have centered on economic issues, will henceforth be directed toward more comprehensive harmonization that will take in social, environmental and food security matters also. 

This announcement was made today after their meeting with the Secretary General of the Andean Community, Freddy Ehlers, with whom they talked for over two hours about harmonizing CAN statistics. 

The meeting was attended by the Directors of the National Statistics Institutes of Bolivia, Johnny Suxo; Ecuador, Byron Villacís; and Peru, Renán Quispe, and the Director of the National Administrative Department of Statistics of Colombia,  Héctor Maldonado, who chairs the Andean Committee of Statistics Authorities and is Chairman of the Statistical Conference of the Americas.

The Directors of Statistics of the four CAN member countries were in agreement on underscoring the positive progress made in the harmonization process initiated in 2000 and the international cooperation received, particularly from the European Union. 

Ecuador’s Director of Statistics, Byron Villacís, reported today that a large amount of data has been and is in the process of being harmonized at the methodological level, but that the challenge in the medium and long-term is to consolidate statistical harmonization in other spheres, like the social and environmental and that of food security.    

Johnny Suxo from Bolivia, for his part, stated that progress has been made at the national and Community levels and with regard to the harmonization of statistics on national accounts and prices, but that there are areas that have yet to be explored, like environmental and food security statistics. 

Renán Quispe from Peru explained that the four CAN countries are working to produce a series of indicators that will make it possible to give form to and publish on a regular basis a document that can support decision making.