In South America, this ICP round received financial support from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. Statistics Canada, that joined the project coordination, was funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

The opinions expressed in this document, which has been reproduced without formal editing, are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Organization.

Introduction

In 2003, the World Bank launched a global round of the International Comparison Program (ICP), aimed at measuring the purchasing power parities (PPP) and corresponding price and volume levels of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on a comparable basis for more than 100 countries, grouped into 5 regions. In South America, ten countries accepted to take part in the project: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

The publication of the results of the 2005 round of the ICP was planned in two phases. The first phase, which South America was the first region to complete, culminated on June 28 2006 with the release of the preliminary results for household consumption, by far the largest component of GDP. They covered price levels, purchasing power parities and real household consumption calculated on the basis these parities.

The second phase deals with GDP and other GDP aggregates - government consumption expenditure, gross fixed capital formation, change in inventories, and balance of exports and imports of goods and services.

South America is the first region to complete the 2005 round of the ICP thanks to the cooperation of the different national statistics offices and central banks of the ten participating countries (the global comparison is expected for December 2007). This report presents the final results for GDP and the other aggregates as well as revised results for household consumption.

The results of the PCI are distributed in PDF format documents and in a CD-ROM (limited distribution) with tables in excel format