The government wants to reform the INDEC. Seven years after his standardization by the Cambiemos administration and after three years of operation during the government of Alberto Fernández without weighing on the statistical entity suspicions of manipulationis now Minister of Economy, Sergio Massawho wants to send Congress a bill of “update” of the law that regulates INDEC.
The supposed improvement that Economics proposes include a greater self-sufficiency of the statistical institute and the adaptation to the statistical standards of the United Nations. But the truth is that the initiative coincides with the start of an electoral campaign in which Massa himself is concentrated on demonstrating that it can bring inflation down to 3% a monthgoal that still could not be achieved, for support his presidential project.
The Economy initiative, which was popularized by The nation and might as well confirm clarionconsists in removing INDEC from the orbit of the Economic Policy Secretariat to transform it into an entity completely self sufficient. Its director, in addition to being proposed by the President, must have the approval of the Senate. To be an institution technical director, you will need to get through a public race.
The mandate of each director would be five years and would take effect from next governmentaccording to the project which already has the technical guarantees of the Ministry of Economy and has been sent to the office of Alberto Fernández send it to Congress.
Politically, the draft seeks to give Congress greater intervention in the designation of authorities and also that the legislators are the ones supervise the march of official statistics.
According to the project, it would seek strengthen the current statistical confidentiality and a new commission would be created in Congress, “trace” statistics.
What is certain is that this “improvement” of the INDEC is part of the government of the same political sign that between 2006 and 2015 the body intervened, dismantled it and released adulterated statistics on inflation and economic growth. The intervention was carried out by the then Secretary of Commerce, Guillermo Morenoarrived at INDEC with the technique Beatrice Paglieri.
In those years, the statistical indices created by private consultants and the provincial bodiesas they served as counterweight of the numbers released by Indec de Moreno.
But the action of the former secretary of Commerce was not limited to intervening and adulterating the statistical system of the official body. Also, he has started to apply a system of heavy fines to private consultants, among which he numbered that of the late Deputy Minister of the Economy, Giorgio Todesca, which then ended up being the normalizer of INDEC during the government of Mauricio Macri. Another consultancy penalized by Moreno was Ecolatina, led by whoever heads the organization today, Marco Lavagna.
Surprisingly, in those years Sergio Massa was one of the leaders who joined the resistance against Moreno’s intervention. In 2011 several opposition deputies created the “IPC Congress”, based on data from private consultancies. When Massa defeated Kirchnerism in the 2013 general election, added his deputies from the Renewal Front within the framework of the “IPC Congress”.
Source: Clarin
