Argentina will keep working with the International Monetary Fund to improve its economic data, the economy minister said in remarks published on Saturday after the IMF warned the country to make swifter progress. The IMF reprimanded Argentina on Tuesday for not taking the necessary steps to boost the quality of the inflation and economic growth data issued by the government's INDEC statistics agency. Many private analysts deem the government's economic statistics misleading.
In the government's first response, Economy Minister Hernan Lorenzino told Pagina 12 newspaper: "We will continue to work as we have been with INDEC as part of an ongoing project to migrate toward a nation-wide consumer price index." The centre-left government is accused of under-reporting inflation since early 2007 for political gain and to reduce payments on its inflation-indexed debt.
Officials deny data manipulation although wage increases and welfare hikes have broadly matched private inflation estimates that more than double the official rate of roughly 10 percent per year. The 2013 budget bill foresees 10.7 percent consumer inflation this year and 10.8 percent in 2013.
In 2010, President Cristina Fernandez unexpectedly asked the IMF, one of her favourite rhetorical punching bags, to send a technical mission to Argentina to help design a new nation-wide consumer price index, raising hopes of improved data. But the move was later interpreted as a bid to buy time since the new index may not go into effect until 2014.
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