Lima, Nov. 16, 2006. Yesterday, the CAN Commission, made up of the Ministers of Trade of the Andean countries, approved five new Community Decisions that will allow the Andean Community Member Countries to improve their statistics and will enable them to have comparable, reliable and timely data for evaluating and following up on their policies and the integration process.  

During the course of the Regular Meeting of the CAN Commission held in Lima, high-level Representatives of the Ministries of Trade of the Andean Member Countries approved a Community Decision on the Andean Community Harmonized Consumer Price Index that establishes a methodology for harmonized calculation, in order to ensure the coherence and comparability of the statistics and the price data collection periods, among other things.  

They also adopted another Community Decision creating the Integral System of Andean Community Social Indicators (SISCAN) that will make it possible to provide the social policy makers, executors or assessors in the CAN Member Countries with specific indicators on poverty, population and housing, education, health, employment, the environment and migration, etc., in order to monitor and evaluate social projects and to jointly follow up on the fulfilment of the Millennium Development Goals, among other things.

The Commission members, further, approved a general framework for the development of the Andean Community Education and Training Program in Statistics for professionals working in the National Statistical Services of each Member Country, in order to shorten and massify integral and continuous specialization and training in statistics, as well as to maintain the highest level of professionalism of those responsible for statistical production. 

At that same meeting, a Community Decision was adopted that establishes the procedure for preparing National Accounts in the CAN Member Countries, based on the National Accounts System adopted by the United Nations. This constitutes the harmonized instrument for measurement of the economies of the Andean countries, both for facilitating their comparison and for promoting and evaluating their economic policies at the national, regional and subregional levels.  Among its benefits is helping to make gross national product estimation in the CAN Member Countries more precise.  

In addition, another Community Decision was approved that will make it possible to harmonize air transport statistics.  It defines the objectives, conceptual framework, series of data, and responsible parties, among other things, thus providing the legal grounding needed by the Member Countries to produce their Community statistics in those areas.