MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

IMF lifts motion of censure on Argentina for manipulating data

Christine Lagarde admits Argentina has made considerable progress under Macri

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Wednesday lifted the censure motion that weighed on the country since 2013, when it decided to sanction Argentina because it considered that statistics at the National Census' Institute (Indec) were being manipulated.

 The fund determined that the country “currently provides the IMF with information on the CPI and GDP in a manner consistent with the obligations” undertaken by Argentina, which did not use to be the case under the presidencies of Néstor Kirchner and his wife Cristina Fernández.

Christine Lagarde, the Fund's managing director, said that “the decision taken today by the IMF Board to lift the declaration of censorship is a testimony to the extraordinary efforts made by the new Argentine government to strengthen the agency responsible for National statistics and produce reliable data.”

The motion goes back to July 2011, when Argentina was found to be in breach of its obligations under Article VIII of the Fund's statute, Section 5, “due to inaccuracies in the provision of data on the CPI and GDP,” it was reported. Then, “because Argentina did not remedy those inaccuracies,” the IMF board “issued an expression of concern and a statement of censorship on September 17, 2012.”

During the administration of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, changes were made to restore the relationship with the IMF, but the agency considered that the irregularities were not properly contemplated, so a “motion of censure” against the country was pronounced in February, 2013.

One of Mauricio Macri's first measures as president was the removal of the Indec directorship, to regularize the price indexes and GDP. The Argentine government then asked the agency to lift the motion of censure and last July the authorities of the Fund determined the existence of “progress” and praised the new measures taken by Macri, but that was as far as they went.

A Monetary Fund mission visited Argentina in September and admitted there had been further progress, which was highlighted in a report during the last Joint Annual Meeting of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington in October. Such a report had not been carried out in Argentina for 10 years.