Between 2007 and 2015, INDEC was a victim of the "statistical blackout" arranged by Kirchnerism to manipulate statistics and
paint a different economy from the one faced by pockets.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) was the first to be touched.
With Guillermo Moreno at the head of the Secretary of Commerce,
in the last year of the Néstor Kirchner government and with Alberto Fernández as Chief of Staff, the organization was intervened.
According to the INDEC at the time,
inflation in 2007 was 8.7%
, the lowest in four years for official statistics.
This manipulation led to the emergence of alternative measurements on the part of the consultants that marked
between 16 and 18% for that year.
The alteration of the statistics
deepened in the two presidencies of Cristina Kirchner.
In 2011, the opposition launched the CPI/Congress, which sought to measure inflation month by month.
The concealment of inflation led to
an underestimation of poverty.
Since this indicator depends on the cost of the basic food basket, by showing lower prices than the real ones, each year there seemed to be fewer poor people.
This is how the famous declaration of the then chief of staff, Aníbal Fernández, was reached, assuring that with a record of 5%, there were fewer poor people in Argentina than in Germany.
The biggest mess came in 2013, when the then Economy Minister Axel Kicillof canceled the official poverty measurement on the grounds that
"measuring poverty is stigmatizing."
In parallel,
the other great drawing of the INDEC was given around the measurement of the GDP.
After the renegotiation of the debt of the first Kirchnerism, the bondholders were offered a "sweetener": the country would pay them an additional each year in which the gross product grew more than 3.2%.
Between 2005 and 2011 -with the exception of 2009 due to the drought and the global financial crisis- Argentina grew strongly and paid that coupon.
But this changed in 2012.
In March 2014, Kicillof announced that economic growth in 2013 had been 3%, less than the 3.2% needed for the coupon to be paid.
The creditors did not sit still and denounced the country criminally.
In February of this year, Argentina lost a lawsuit in the London High Court brought by four investment funds.
The London court ruled that the country had to pay
US$1.5 billion for this manipulation.
Argentina appealed and the payment has not yet been made.
Thus, despite the fact that the INDEC normalized in 2016 and until today there are no doubts about its credibility, the shadow of the statistical blackout continues to hang over the economy.
AQ
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Reversal of the INDEC: it will give the inflation data for April on Friday the 12th, before the elections in five provinces