WASHINGTON: The International Monetary Fund on Friday welcomed efforts by Argentina’s new government to improve the reliability of official economic statistics, whose poor quality had prompted an IMF censure.
At the conclusion of a three-day visit to Buenos Aires, an IMF technical team said it had held talks with officials about methodology and underlying data on the country’s new official statistics on consumer prices and economic growth.
The team “was impressed by the authorities’ strong commitment to improving the quality and transparency regarding official data,” the IMF said in a statement.
The fund censured Argentina in 2013 for failing to meet an IMF requirement for members to provide reliable, basic economic statistics. Critics said Argentina manipulated the data to present a stronger picture of the economy.
The IMF measure further frayed relations that were already sour. Argentina often accused the IMF of precipitating its sovereign debt default in 2001.
However, relations have improved since President Mauricio Macri took office in December, pledging economic reforms such as making statistics more credible. The authorities overhauled the methodology for calculating inflation and launched a new price index in June.
