from Financial Times
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
That, apparently, is the mantra of the Argentine government when it comes to inflation. And woe to those who contradict it. Just ask the folks at Consumidores Libres, a non-profit that tracks prices and represents consumers in consumer protection lawsuits.
Consumidores Libres’s fortnightly grocery price index was published last Friday in Clarín, the nation’s largest newspaper. The index showed that consumer prices had risen 17.5 per cent in 2012, three times the rate reported by the country’s national statistics agency, INDEC.
Later that day, Consumidores Libres was informed by the country’s consumer defense department, a division of the economy ministry, that its non-profit registration and its place in the national registry of consumer defense agencies were being suspended.
“If they suspend our registration we don’t exist as a non-profit and if they take us out of the registry all the legal actions we’ve begun on behalf of consumers fall into limbo,” Consumidores Libres founder Héctor Polino told Clarín.
The government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has long expressed irritation with those who differ with the laughably rosy consumer inflation numbers that started coming out of INDEC after the government changed key personnel and methodology there in 2007.
And this is not the first time that the government has hit those who contradict INDEC with economic sanctions. Last year, the Fernández de Kirchner government fined a dozen consultancies and research firms 500,000 pesos (about $108,000) for publishing their own inflation data on the basis that they were using faulty methods and spreading misinformation.
To avoid those sanctions, a group of opposition lawmakers now concocts an index using data from unnamed private firms. This index pegs inflation at some 24 per cent year-over-year, while INDEC reports a rate of 9.9 per cent.
“The government wants to hide the fact that there are price increases, even when Argentines see them every day at the supermarkets,” Polino told Bloomberg.
According to Polino, the government also wanted to punish Consumidores Libres for having its statistics appear in Clarín, which the government has treated as a sworn enemy in recent years. Consumidores Libres has followed grocery prices for 18 years and its index has appeared in many publications without problem, Polino said in an article in the La Nación newspaper.
In the government’s defense, the head of the consumer defense department, María Lucila “Pimpi” Colombo said that the group was not being punished for its appearance in Clarín but for the weakness of their data. She said that her department had long been troubled by inexact price indices and had sent a letter to Consumidores Libres and similar groups in early August asking them to explain their methodologies. In the case of Consumidores Libres, on the day of its suspension the group received a notification from the consumer defense department telling it that:
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
That, apparently, is the mantra of the Argentine government when it comes to inflation. And woe to those who contradict it. Just ask the folks at Consumidores Libres, a non-profit that tracks prices and represents consumers in consumer protection lawsuits.
Consumidores Libres’s fortnightly grocery price index was published last Friday in Clarín, the nation’s largest newspaper. The index showed that consumer prices had risen 17.5 per cent in 2012, three times the rate reported by the country’s national statistics agency, INDEC.
Later that day, Consumidores Libres was informed by the country’s consumer defense department, a division of the economy ministry, that its non-profit registration and its place in the national registry of consumer defense agencies were being suspended.
“If they suspend our registration we don’t exist as a non-profit and if they take us out of the registry all the legal actions we’ve begun on behalf of consumers fall into limbo,” Consumidores Libres founder Héctor Polino told Clarín.
The government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has long expressed irritation with those who differ with the laughably rosy consumer inflation numbers that started coming out of INDEC after the government changed key personnel and methodology there in 2007.
And this is not the first time that the government has hit those who contradict INDEC with economic sanctions. Last year, the Fernández de Kirchner government fined a dozen consultancies and research firms 500,000 pesos (about $108,000) for publishing their own inflation data on the basis that they were using faulty methods and spreading misinformation.
To avoid those sanctions, a group of opposition lawmakers now concocts an index using data from unnamed private firms. This index pegs inflation at some 24 per cent year-over-year, while INDEC reports a rate of 9.9 per cent.
“The government wants to hide the fact that there are price increases, even when Argentines see them every day at the supermarkets,” Polino told Bloomberg.
According to Polino, the government also wanted to punish Consumidores Libres for having its statistics appear in Clarín, which the government has treated as a sworn enemy in recent years. Consumidores Libres has followed grocery prices for 18 years and its index has appeared in many publications without problem, Polino said in an article in the La Nación newspaper.
In the government’s defense, the head of the consumer defense department, María Lucila “Pimpi” Colombo said that the group was not being punished for its appearance in Clarín but for the weakness of their data. She said that her department had long been troubled by inexact price indices and had sent a letter to Consumidores Libres and similar groups in early August asking them to explain their methodologies. In the case of Consumidores Libres, on the day of its suspension the group received a notification from the consumer defense department telling it that:
The price measurement performed by [Consumidores Libres] lacks the rigor, scientific basis, and statistical consistency needed for this kind of measurement, because of which its publication or access by consumers could cause confusion or the spread of false data, thereby possibly leading to poor choices in the consumption of goods.While Consumidores Libres’s ad hoc price index of 38 foods might not be the stuff of high science, this certainly sounds like shooting the messenger to silence the message.
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