Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (Argentina)
The Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (abbreviation INDEC , German National Institute for Statistics and Census ) is the Argentine statistical office .
Two of the many fields of activity are exemplary:
- censuses ( censos ), which is about to take place every ten years. House visits with detailed surveys are used to determine not only the population, but also the ethnic composition and the professional and living conditions of the Argentines;
- the Encuesta permanente de hogares , a permanent survey that is limited to the major metropolitan areas of Argentina. It is used to determine socio-economic data such as unemployment and the poverty rate . These data are published every six months.
Intervention affair 2007
In January 2007, against the background of a high inflation rate and upcoming presidential elections in October 2007, the government of Néstor Kirchner replaced Graciela Bevacqua, who was responsible for determining the price index at the INDEC statistics office. State Secretary in the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Guillermo Moreno, put pressure on the statistics department:
“The demands from Moreno were daily. He challegend our data, our methodology and our results. Phone calls from Moreno were 40-minutes-long shouting demands, asking for information to which, by law, neither he nor his office had any right. There was no stopping his bullying; even the Minister Economics, who outranked Moreno, was cowed into serving as the go-between between Moreno and INDEC. "
“Moreno's demands came daily. He questioned our data, our methods and our results. Moreno's calls were 40 minutes of shouted requests for information that neither he nor his office had a legal right to. There was no stopping his bullying; The Minister of Economic Affairs, actually Moreno's superior who served as an intermediary between Moreno and INDEC, was intimidated. "
Various requirements have been made, e.g. B.
- change the rounding so that, for example, 2.599 and 2.501 are always rounded down to 2.5,
- Weighting cheap goods (e.g. bread, textiles) more heavily in the shopping cart than expensive goods, regardless of how they really sell,
- so-called precios acordados , capped prices that were negotiated between sellers and the government, to take more into account in the price index, regardless of whether these prices are actually paid in everyday life and
- For certain goods it was requested to indicate in which shops INDEC collects the prices and sales quantities.
Thereupon protests arose among the staff of the institute, who accused the government of exerting pressure on them to indicate a lower inflation rate than the measured one in the monthly price development report, i.e. to improve the figures. As a result, the chairman of the institute, Lelio Mármora , resigned. In March, the institute subsequently corrected the inflation rate downwards, which severely damaged the institute's credibility. In response, Minister of Economic Affairs Felisa Miceli changed the leadership of the institute again in mid-April, with the aim of restoring transparency and credibility.
Since then, the Argentine statistical office INDEC has come under heavy criticism when it comes to measuring the inflation rate. The INDEC and the government are accused of glossing over the inflation rate. Some economists assumed a real rate of inflation of almost 20% to as much as 23% for 2007. This is 12 to 15 percentage points more than the official inflation rate of 8%.
An analysis by the Faculty of Economics of the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba at the beginning of 2009 came to the conclusion that the inflation rate (according to the consumer price index IPC) in 2008 was 23.05%, compared to the 7.2% reported by INDEC. According to the authors of the study, a serious problem is that both the consumer price index and the wholesale price index, which is also questioned, also influence the official calculation of gross domestic product. According to the UNC's calculations, real economic growth in 2008 was not 7.2%, but only 5.95%.
In February 2012, The Economist decided to stop using the official INDEC price index figures:
“Since 2007 Argentina's government has published inflation figures that almost nobody believes. ... In 2010 we added a precautionary footnote to our statistical tables. From this week, we have decided to drop INDEC's figures entirely. We are tired of being an unwilling party to what appears to be a deliberate attempt to deceive voters and swindle investors. "
“Since 2007, the Argentine government has released inflation figures that almost no one believes. ... Since 2010 we have been publishing precautionary footnotes to our statistical tables. From this week we have decided not to use the INDEC numbers anymore. We are tired of participating in what looks like a deliberate attempt to deceive voters and investors. "
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Alicia Carriquiry: Graciela Bevacqua . In: significance . tape 9 , no. 6 . John Wiley & Sons, Inc., S. 34--36 ( significancemagazine.org ). Graciela Bevacqua ( Memento of the original from August 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Article in La Voz del Interior
- ↑ Source: "Cómputos de la AFIP indican suba mayor, estima 20% anual (contra 8% de Moreno)" in: Ámbito Financiero of October 1, 2007. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatic marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Estimate by Morgan Stanley , quoted in: Inflation in emerging economies - An old enemy rears its head in: Economist, May 22, 2008
- ↑ Jorge Mauricio Oviedo: ¿Podemos dudar sólo de la inflación que publica el Indec? (No longer available online.) La Voz del Interior, February 1, 2009, formerly in the original ; Retrieved February 1, 2009 . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Don't lie to me, Argentina. The Economist Newspaper Limited, February 25, 2012, accessed August 1, 2014 .
Coordinates: 34 ° 36 ′ 37.6 ″ S , 58 ° 22 ′ 29.8 ″ W.