Argentina’s new, honest inflation statistics

SOME readers of The Economist may be numbed by statistics. To many others, they are the water of cognitive life. Each week at the back of this newspaper we publish official data on 42 of the largest economies in the world—with one exception. Five years ago we stopped publishing the inflation figure for Argentina produced by the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner because we, and many others, thought it was bogus. We substituted an inflation number drawn up by PriceStats, an international data service. A year later the IMF followed our lead, formally censuring Argentina for “inaccuracy” in its data.

This week we are delighted to resume publication of the official inflation number for Argentina. One of the first things that Mauricio Macri did after he was elected as the country’s president in November 2015, defeating Ms Fernández’s candidate, was to restore the professional independence of INDEC, the statistical office. He charged it with drawing up a new, accurate inflation index. This month marks a year since this index was launched. It shows that inflation in greater Buenos Aires in the 12 months to April was 27.5%. That figure is uncomfortably high, but refreshingly honest. Under Ms Fernández, INDEC found that inflation in 2008-13 averaged about 10% a year, between a third and half of private estimates. Under pressure from the IMF, INDEC raised its estimate to 24% in 2014, but private calculations were higher still.