In 2003, the World Bank began the International Comparison Program willing to measure the parities of purchasing power and the levels corresponding of price and volume of the Gross National Product - GDP in a comparable base for more than 110 countries, grouped in five regions: South America, Africa, Middle East, Asia and Commonwealth of Independent States -CIS (former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). This initiative has the objective of providing quantitative and objective answers to fundamental questions for the international comparisons of economic indicators and the counseling of national policies, such as: "how much is country A more expensive than country B", "in what sense and how much is the currency A valued in relation to currency B" or, still, "how much is the consumption per capita of goods and services of country A greater than in country B".