Authorities urge to deepen regional cooperation to meet the growing demand for timely and quality statistical information

Representatives of the national statistical institutes of Latin America and the Caribbean called today to deepen statistical cooperation at the regional and international levels to meet the growing demand for timely and quality data and information for a sustainable and equitable recovery, during the inauguration of the twenty-first meeting of the Executive Committee of the Statistical Conference of the Americas (CEA) of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

Twenty-eight member states and four associate members are participating in the intergovernmental meeting, which is being held until Thursday the 25th at ECLAC headquarters in Santiago, Chile, as well as representatives of United Nations agencies, funds and intergovernmental and academia.

The Conference was opened by Rolando Ocampo, Director of the Statistics Division of ECLAC; Marco Lavagna, Director of the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC) of Argentina, the country that holds the Presidency of the Statistical Conference of the Americas of ECLAC, and Stefan Schweinfest, Director of the United Nations Statistics Division.

In his opening speech, Rolando Ocampo thanked the member countries for their vocation for collaborative work and initiative to generate useful products for the region through the actions of the working groups and other complementary mechanisms.

Likewise, he referred to the central issues that will mark the course of the meeting: recent advances in the implementation of population and housing censuses, and the statistical challenges for measuring development, among others.

In this sense, he highlighted that censuses are one of the most important statistical operations that a country can carry out, and an essential source of information for public policies and for countless statistical operations that use the inputs provided by them.

He warned that, despite its importance, implementing the most recent census round has not been easy, because the logistical and financial difficulties posed by the COVID-19 pandemic required delays in the survey and redesign of the necessary processes.

For this reason, he said, “we consider that this is an excellent moment to have a conversation about the experiences and lessons learned, which can serve as a reference for the processes that are underway and help us to better visualize the path to follow for the continuity of the censuses in the future”.

The Director of the Statistics Division of ECLAC also addressed the measurement of development and stressed that although GDP has been widely used as an indicator of the development of countries, this is not the purpose for which it was conceived. Therefore, it does not adequately reflect desirable aspects of sustainable development, such as environmental sustainability, social inequalities or respect for human rights.

Marco Lavagna, Director of INDEC of Argentina, meanwhile, stated that the COVID-19 pandemic posed great challenges in terms of how to continue with the production and dissemination of statistics, which made it possible to speed up processes that might have taken many more years. such as the incorporation of new technologies.

“The pandemic forced us to be more flexible and adapt,” he said, highlighting the relevance of cooperation and exchange between the different statistical offices of the countries of the region.

Stefan Schweinfest, Director of the UN Statistics Division, meanwhile, stressed that every crisis is an opportunity and the challenges are great.

“The demand for good data and information is growing every day. We are on the road to recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and in the midst of the war in Ukraine and facing huge challenges like climate change,” he noted.

During the twenty-first meeting of the Executive Committee of the Statistical Conference of the Americas of ECLAC, the authorities will review recent experiences in carrying out population censuses in the countries of the region and will analyze the perspectives of the countries that are about to carry it out .

Likewise, they will examine the progress in the execution of the Biennial Program of Regional and International Cooperation Activities 2022-2023.

Within the framework of the meeting, a seminar will be held on the measurement of development Beyond GDP, in which the various statistical challenges related to improving the measurement of GDP and the production of complementary indicators to account for economic development will be addressed. social and environmental.

Likewise, the document “Breaking the statistical silence to achieve gender equality in 2030” will be presented, a joint contribution of the Regional Conference on Women and the Statistical Conference of the Americas to strengthen the production of information on gender inequalities that , with regard to the statistical field, will constitute an input for the construction of methodological guides that contribute to the production of gender statistics and indicators with greater comparability, relevance and timeliness.

Together with Argentina in the Presidency, the Executive Committee of the Statistical Conference of the Americas for the 2022-2023 biennium is made up of Canada, Colombia, Granada, Italy, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.