The meeting, chaired by Mexico, took place on September 25 and 26 in Madrid, Spain, and included the participation of 17 countries from the region and nine international organizations. The members of the Executive Committee gave preliminary approval to the proposed 2005-2015 strategic plan and the guidelines for the 2007-2009 biennial program of regional and international cooperation, with an emphasis on three key areas: monitoring the Millennium Development Goals, the 2010 census round, and strengthening the institutional capacity of national statistical systems.

The Statistical Conference of the Americas, an intergovernmental body of the ECLAC system that promotes the development of official statistics, will meet for the fourth time since its creation by the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in 2000 during the last week of July 2007 at ECLAC headquarters in Santiago, Chile. The purpose of the meeting is to evaluate the work carried out and adopt decisions and initiatives for the 2007-2009 period that will provide the region with statistics of greater coverage, disaggregation, and quality.

The strategic plan, preliminarily approved by the Conference's Executive Committee, urges the governments of the region to ensure that their national statistical systems achieve adequate institutional frameworks and resources, in accordance with the fundamental principles of official United Nations statistics.