The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Statistical Office of the European Union (Eurostat) signed an administrative agreement for cooperation in the field of statistics on Thursday, March 9. The ceremony, held virtually, was led by the Executive Secretary of the United Nations regional body, José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, and Mariana Kotzeva, Director General of Eurostat.
The objective of the agreement is to carry out activities that serve to share knowledge between the parties; facilitate opportunities for technical cooperation and research collaboration; and generate greater links between Eurostat and the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean in terms of the collection and production of statistics.
During the virtual ceremony, both representatives thanked the opportunity to formalize the long and close cooperative relationship between both institutions and exchanged points of view on the issues of common interest that will be part of the agreement.
“ECLAC and Eurostat share the common objective of promoting sustainable and inclusive development, so we believe that cooperation in the collection and analysis of statistical data will greatly enhance our efforts to achieve this objective”, declared the Executive Secretary of the regional commission of the United Nations, José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs.
Mariana Kotzeva, Director General of Eurostat, explained that each year the technical teams of each institution will transform the general priorities established in the agreement into a specific action plan, with the aim of “solving together the most important statistical issues for development.”
“Statistics can only be beneficial if they are comparable around the world,” emphasized Mariana Kotzeva.
The experience of Eurostat, stated José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, is very valuable to support the activities of the working groups of the Statistical Conference of the Americas (CEA), a subsidiary body of ECLAC that contributes to the progress of the policies and activities of statistics in the countries of the region and promotes international, regional and bilateral cooperation between national statistical institutes and international and regional organizations.
ECLAC is also implementing a project to strengthen the geospatial capacities of national statistical offices to monitor the 2030 Agenda in Latin America and the Caribbean, which is financed by Pillar II of the Technical Cooperation of the European Union and includes different types of activities.
The head of ECLAC was accompanied by the Agency’s Deputy Executive Secretary for Program Administration and Analysis, Raúl García-Buchaca, and the Director of the Statistics Division, Rolando Ocampo.
