MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine August ‘non-official’ inflation index marks 1.9% and 24.23% in twelve months

Opposition members from congress making the announcement

Argentina’s August inflation index based in the analysis of nine private agencies and released by Congressional members from the opposition climbed 1.9% against the previous month, the highest in the last four months.

The head of the Radical Party at the Lower House of Congress announced that the inflation index is three times higher than the one reported by the Indec national statistics bureau. Along with Lawmakers Patricia Bullrich and Paula Bertol, Gil Lavedra also denounced “censorship” of the private agencies to publish their prices index.

The lawmakers also stated that the inflation had hit 24.23% year-on-year.

Because of the ban and threat of fines on private economic consultants that release their findings without government approval, opposition members of congress from the Freedom of speech committee since last year make a monthly release based on the average of nine of those agencies.

The “Congressional index” as it is also known, is significantly higher than that from the official stats office Indec that had its professional staff removed and replaced by political cronies that allegedly make up the percentages to better accommodate to President Cristina Fernandez political needs.

However the official indexes from Indec have been questioned by multilateral organizations such as the IMF and the World Bank, are not included in the court rulings on disputes and are completely ignored by the unions most of which have their own estimates and reach salary agreements on the basis of over 25% annual inflation, much more in line with the private agencies estimates.

In July the Congressional index marked 1.76% and Indec, 0.8%; June, 1.68% and 0.7%; May, 1.7% and 0.8%; April, 2.16% and 0.8%; March, 2.31% and 0.9%; February, 1.65% and 0.7% and January, 1.9% and 0.9%.