Argentina’s new pro-business government said on Thursday it hoped to begin publishing “pure” and accurate economic data this year after its leftist predecessors were accused of manipulating economic figures.
INDEC national statistics institute head Graciela Bevacqua said the body hoped to relaunch publication of economic growth data within the first six months of this year, but she warned it would take longer than that to fix the system for accurately calculating inflation and poverty.
Those are two politically sensitive measures that former Argentine president Cristina Fernandez was accused of masking.
Bevacqua said it could be eight months before inflation data could be published, though “work is being done to do it sooner.”
She said the simplest data to compile is foreign trade balance figures, which would be ready next month.
“It is better to have no indicator at all than to have a false indicator,” Argentine Minister of the Economy Alfonso Prat-Gay told a news conference. “The aim is for the indicators to be as pure as possible.”
The minister said he estimated the Argentine economy — the third-biggest in Latin America — would start to recover in the second half of this year.
He forecast it would grow by “about 0.5 to 1 percent” overall in this year and an average of 4.5 percent over the following three years.
The IMF in 2013 censured the figures published by Fernandez’s administration, which differed wildly from the estimates of private economists.
Fernandez championed populist social welfare programs and protectionist policies that earned her the love of many Argentines, but the mistrust of businesses and investors.
Prat-Gay on Tuesday estimated inflation last year hit about 30 percent and the public deficit about 6 percent of GDP.
Since taking office a month ago, Argentine President Mauricio Macri has pushed through a series of economically liberal reforms to reverse Fernandez’s policies.
The reforms included freeing up foreign trade and currency controls, moves that critics say hurt poorer Argentines.
“To control price expectations is the government’s biggest worry,” Prat-Gay said, adding that it would not be easy given the state of the economy.
Annual inflation is expected to reach 25 percent this year. He said the government hopes to have inflation slowed to 5 percent by 2019.
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