The countries participating in the tenth meeting of the Statistical Conference of the Americas of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) reaffirmed today their commitment to statistical development through cooperation with the regional and international statistics community, at the closing session of the gathering held on November 19-21 in Santiago, Chile.

At the meeting, the countries agreed on the need to seek a collaborative regional response to the demand for official statistics that support the formulation of policies with an empirical basis that contributes to improving the organization and management of national statistical systems, within the framework of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Furthermore, they approved a generic legislative proposal on official statistics for Latin America, as a regional model for those countries interested in developing or reformulating the legal foundation for the functioning of their respective national statistical systems and the production of official statistics.

At the closing ceremony, Guillermo Patillo, Director of the National Institute of Statistics (INE) of Chile and outgoing chair of the Statistical Conference of the Americas, thanked the participants and underlined his conviction that cooperation will help strengthen the region’s statistical system.

Meanwhile, Rolando Ocampo, Chief of ECLAC’s Statistics Division, thanked the country representatives and the Agencies of the United Nations System, as well as the INE and the team from ECLAC.

In their final resolution, approved unanimously by the 21 Member States and 3 associate members present at the meeting, the participating countries supported the creation of 11 Working Groups of the Statistical Conference of the Americas, which will address the issues on statistical development that have the highest priority for the region’s countries. They also approved a joint statement about the integration of statistical and geospatial information presented at the tenth meeting.

The statistics authorities also held a presentation on a proposal for a regional website on the Sustainable Development Goals – the SDG Gateway – developed under ECLAC’s leadership in an interinstitutional fashion in conjunction with the United Nations system’s agencies, funds and programs in the region, as a key tool for supporting countries on the implementation and follow-up of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

This tool will be presented during the Fourth Meeting of the Forum of the Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean on Sustainable Development, which will be held in 2020 in Havana, Cuba, as a regional contribution to the 2030 Agenda’s implementation.

The countries agreed that the Executive Committee of the Statistical Conference of the Americas for the 2020-2021 period will consist of Colombia as Chair, along with Canada, Chile, Grenada, Italy, Jamaica and Mexico.

The main mandates of the Statistical Conference of the Americas, a subsidiary body of ECLAC, are to promote the development and improvement of national statistics and their international comparability, as well as international, regional and bilateral cooperation among national offices and international and regional agencies.