MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

IMF will use private and provincial data to gauge Argentine economy

Allegedly manipulation of statistics begun with former president Nestor Kirchner

The International Monetary Fund will use estimates from the private sector and provincial governments to measure economic growth and inflation in Argentina, underscoring the IMF distrust of official data.

News of the IMF plans was revealed in the World Economic Outlook report released Tuesday. The IMF pointed out that Argentine authorities have pledged to improve their growth and inflation estimates “to bring them into compliance with their obligations” as an IMF member.

But until “the quality of data reporting has improved, IMF staff will also use alternative measures of GDP growth and inflation for macroeconomic surveillance including estimates by: private analysts, which have shown growth that is, on average, significantly lower than official GDP growth from 2008 onward; and provincial statistical offices and private analysts, which have shown inflation considerably higher than the official inflation rate from 2007 onward”.

In its report, the IMF forecast GDP growth of 8% this year and 4.6% in 2012, while estimating 2011 inflation at 11.5% and 11.8% next year. The comment that followed said that “…in other economies, such as Argentina and Venezuela, inflation is projected to remain in double digits, reflecting expansionary policies”.
It wasn't clear exactly how the IMF calculated those forecasts.

The IMF said Argentina's economic growth data started to diverge from private-sector estimates in 2008, while inflation data started raising questions in 2007.

Argentina's national statistics agency, Indec, said that annual inflation as measured by its consumer price index was 9.8% at the end of August, compared with most private-sector estimates that put inflation north of 20%, as has become reported monthly with the so-called “Congressional index”.

The credibility of data published by Indec has been in doubt since former President Nestor Kirchner replaced Indec longtime civil servants with political appointees in early 2007.

Since then, economists have accused Indec of manipulating data to make the numbers appear rosier than they are in reality. Indec officials deny the allegations and say their data have never been better.

However in July, the government filed criminal charges against the managers of an economic consulting firm for allegedly “publishing false information about inflation data.”

The criminal complaint was the harshest in a series of legal measures against economists who publish their own proprietary measures of consumer prices.

So far this year, the government has fined at least nine economic research firms 500,000 Pesos (120.000 dollars) each to deter economists from publishing data the authorities say are misleading the public.