The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics was elected co-chair of the International Comparison Program (ICP) Governing Board. The ICP is one of the foremost statistical comparison initiatives in the world. The Board will be co-chaired in partnership with Badan Pusat Statistik Indonesia (BPS) — Statistics Indonesia.

The election was held last Sunday (1) during the Governing Board Meeting, in New York, USA. "The IBGE being elected co-chair of the International Comparison Program Governing Board reaffirms Brazil's leading role in statistics worldwide, and its direct contribution to the improvement of price statistics and internation GDP comparisons," said Marcio Pochmann, president of the IBGE. 

The  IBGE Head of International Relations, Andrea Diniz, celebrated the achievement and emphasized the importance of this partnership with an Asian institution: “A shared presidency with Indonesia will help us benefit from the existi synergy between the two institutes.”

Diniz also highlighted that the IBGE and the BPS have worked together in the UN Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science. “In 2025 we signed a cooperation agreement in the academic and reasearch field."

During the ICP Governing Board meeting, the attendees discussed governance activities and the administrative structure and the technical advisory board was introduced. Other topics covered were the results achieved by the ICP and its impementation all over the world. 

The IBGE Director of Surveys IBGE, Gustavo Junger, emphasized that "the nomination of the IBGE as co-chair of the International Comparison Program Governing Board, jointly with Statistics Indonesia is a major milestone in recognition of the role played by the IBGE and places the Institute as a protagonist of the program's strategic decisions.”

More about the ICP

The International Comparison Program was launched in 1968, as a joint project of the United Nations and the University of Pennsylvania. The project received support from Ford Foundation and from the World Bank to implement regular system for Gross Domestic Product (GDP) comparison, based on the purchasing power parity (PPC) of more than 100 countries.

In its 47th session, in March 2016, the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC) endorsed he ICP as a permanent element of the global statistical program.