(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) A consortium of donors to provide resources to strengthen coordination among international agencies with regard to the 2010 Round of Censuses in the Region, is to be established in 2008. A proposal to this effect was presented by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to the 15th Meeting of the Regional Census Coordinating Committee (RCCC) held recently in Paramaribo, Suriname.

The consortium, to be headed by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), will support international agencies in facilitating rapid response to countries of the Region during the conduct of the 2010 Census Round. The 2010 Round of Censuses started in 2005 and will conclude in 2014.

The RCCC meeting held at the Hotel Krasnapolsky in Paramaribo, endorsed a project jointly funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the UNFPA, under which a common census framework would be created. It also endorsed the establishment of a strategy for disseminating Census 2010 data utilising the UN Devinfo software to effectively present Census data in a harmonised manner.

The meeting was preceded by the Thirty-Second Meeting of the Standing Committee of Caribbean Statisticians (SCCS) which was held at the same venue under the theme `Enabling the Development of the CSME through Evidence-based Policy – The Case for Increasing Investment in Statistics’.