Argentina: An Update on Credibility in CPI and Other Official Statistics and Perils Endured by Some Statisticians

• Activity Number: 543
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 1, 2012 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Committee on Scientific Freedom and Human Rights
• Author(s): Edmundo Berumen*+ and Victor A Beker
• Companies: Berumen y Asociados, SA de CV and Economia de la Universidad de Belgrano
• Keywords: Continued harassment ; independent review of INDEC´s CPI work ; good practices ; Human Rights to transparency and credibility

Abstract

At its meeting in Dublin, Ireland on 25 august 2011, the General Assembly of the International Statistical Institute Official Statistics presented a review and expressed ISI concerns regarding the manipulation since 2007 of the Argentine CPI and the explicit harassment to the statistical Profession and individual statisticians in Argentina. Incidents of continued harassment to private statistical local research agencies and individual statisticians (several ex-INDEC technical staff) have continued to occur; so too the CPI manipulation, where from the defence of Human Rights to transparency one may speculate that if the GDP growth rate and the fall in poverty if INDEC is using the CPI as deflator the real GDP is overvalued, and people living under the poverty line is underestimated. The paper reports the work undertaken by a Commission of Universities to assess the technical work at INDEC