Statement
A statement is a syntactically valid combination of identifiers and symbols (literals, relational-operators, and so forth) beginning with a COBOL verb.
Execution begins with the first statement in the Procedure Division, excluding declaratives. Statements are executed in the order in which they are presented for compilation, unless the statement rules dictate some other order of execution.
The Procedure Division ends at the physical end of the program; that is, the physical position in a source program after which no further statements appear.