More bad publicity for Argentina’s official Stats office, Indec: not only are the institution’s releases on inflation taken lightly or ignored by a majority of Argentines and openly questioned by the International Monetary Fund, now the head of the office was caught driving under the influence of alcohol.
The International Monetary Fund ratified on Thursday that “on December 17” it will assess the “quality of Argentine statistics, particularly those referred to inflation”, an issue over which it had already warned the administration of President Cristina Fernandez.
One of Argentina’ leading international corporations, Techint, made public a 200 pages report sent to the Buenos Aires stock exchange with a devastating picture of the country’s economy which “continues in a state of fragility”.
Argentine exports in September experienced their largest drop since the 2009 financial crisis totalling 6.818bn dollars or 12% less than the same month a year ago, according to the latest report on the country’s foreign trade released by INDEC.
Argentina's 12-month inflation expectations slid in October for the first time in eight months, according to the median estimate in a survey published by the Torcuato Di Tella University, UTDT.
An Argentine video game allows players to compare the prices used by the National Statistics and Census Institute, Indec, to measure inflation with those consumers say they pay, a pastime that has caused angry reactions among players when they see the gap.
Official inflation in Argentina reached 0.9% in September against August, accumulating 7.8% in the first nine months of this year and 10% in the year, according to the Indec national statistics bureau.
Argentine opposition lawmakers presented on Thursday September’s ‘Congress inflation index’ based in the analysis of nine private agencies, which showed a 1.93% increase against the previous month and 18% in the first nine months of 2012.
Poverty in Argentina is at least three times the official figure presented by the controversial government stats office, Indec, if the criteria and methodology applied by the Argentine Catholic University Social Debt Barometer are taken into account.
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde warned Argentina on Monday that the multilateral lender is willing to show it a red card if by December the government of Cristina Fernández does not meet its promises of providing reliable inflation and GDP statistics, during a conference at the Peterson Institute in Washington DC.