Lima, Dec. 10, 2008.-  The Ministers and Vice-Ministers of Trade of the Andean Community countries, during the regular meeting of the CAN Commission being held since yesterday in Lima, gave an impetus today to the construction of Community statistical legislation by approving a total of six Community decisions on the subject. 

In one of their Decisions, the Plenipotentiary Representatives of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru ordered the preparation of environmental indicators in the Andean community, establishing the characteristics of the task and the deadlines for its accomplishment.  This will provide the necessary objective information for the elaboration and application of effective environmental policies.

In another Community decision, they committed themselves to prepare and transmit harmonized Community statistics on SMEs that are needed for the design, follow-up and evaluation of Community policies.  They accordingly defined the scope of SME, the thresholds and the series of data for transmission, among other things.    

The representatives of the CAN Commission, in another Decision, established a common regulatory framework for the production of short-term statistics on the manufacturing industry, in order to guarantee the harmonized collection, processing, transmission and analysis of the Andean Community’s principal indicators.   

They likewise approved the 2008-2013 Community Statistical Program that indicates the approaches to be taken and the principal spheres and objectives of the actions planned for that period and covers the Community’s policy priorities in strengthening and deepening the Andean integration process. 

The creation of Enterprise Directories was ordered for statistical purposes and the groundwork was laid for obtaining reliable production statistics that are comparable among the CAN Member Countries. 

Lastly, they established a frame of reference for the preparation of statistics on foreign trade in services among the CAN countries, both for comparative purposes and to follow-up on and evaluate the course of international negotiations.