Between 2007 and 2015, INDEC was the victim of the “statistical blackout” organized by Kirchnerism to manipulate statistics and paint an economy different from the one faced by the pockets.
The consumer price index (CPI) was the first to be affected. With Guillermo Moreno leading the Secretary of Commerce, In the last year of Néstor Kirchner’s government and with Alberto Fernández as chief of staff, the agency intervened.
According to the INDEC at the time, inflation in 2007 was 8.7%, the lowest in four years according to official statistics. This manipulation led to the emergence of alternative measurements by the consultancies they marked between 16 and 18% for that year.
The alteration of statistics deepened in the two presidencies of Cristina Kirchner. In 2011, the opposition launched the CPI/Congress, which sought to measure inflation on a month-by-month basis.
The concealment of inflation has led to an underestimation of poverty. Since this indicator depends on the cost of the basic food basket, showing lower-than-real prices, there seemed to be fewer poor people every year. Thus we arrived at the famous declaration of the then head of cabinet, Aníbal Fernández, who ensured that with a record of 5%, there were fewer poor people in Argentina than in Germany.
The biggest mess occurred in 2013, when then Economy Minister Axel Kicillof abandoned official poverty measurement on the basis that “Measuring poverty is stigmatizing.”
In parallel, The other major design of the INDEC was given around the measurement of the GDP. After the debt renegotiations of early Kirchnerism, bondholders were offered a “sweetener”: the country would pay them a premium every year in which gross product grew by more than 3.2%.
Between 2005 and 2011 – with the exception of 2009 due to drought and the global financial crisis – Argentina grew strongly and paid that coupon. But that changed in 2012.
In March 2014, Kicillof announced that economic growth in 2013 had been 3%, lower than the 3.2% needed for the coupon payment. The creditors did not stand still and criminally denounced the country. In February this year, Argentina lost a lawsuit brought by four investment funds in the High Court in London.
The London court ruled that the country should pay 1.5 billion dollars for this manipulation. Argentina has appealed and the payment has not yet been made. Thus, although the INDEC normalized in 2016 and to date there are no doubts about its credibility, the shadow of the statistical blackout continues to hang over the economy.
AQ
Source: Clarin
