AFTER seven years of manipulating inflation numbers, INDEC, Argentina’s statistics agency, rolled out a new, more believable consumer price index (CPI) in February. Economists warily applauded the agency’s first step towards normalisation. But “ojo!” (“look out!”), they warned: INDEC still had much to prove.
The agency is failing one important litmus test: owning up to Argentina’s real poverty rates. Until January INDEC announced the value of the basic-goods baskets it uses to calculate poverty and indigence every month. Since the introduction of its new CPI series, however, INDEC has not made a single statement on this topic. In February the agency’s schedule said it would make its first announcement on poverty rates on April 23rd. But that day came and went and the only noticeable action by INDEC was to purge any mention of poverty data from the agency’s calendar of upcoming statistical releases.
Jorge Capitanich, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s cabinet chief, chalked the omission up to “problems with methodology” and bridging the gap between old measurement techniques and new ones. If...Continue reading
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