National Statistics and Censuses Institute (, INDEC) is the Argentine government agency responsible for the collection and processing of statistical data. The institute also analyses economical and social indicators such as inflation rate, consumer price index and unemployment, among others.

Functions

The INDEC is supervised by different federal agencies, and is under the direct oversight of the Secretaría de Programación Económica y Regional (Secretariat of Economic and Regional Planning) of the Ministerio de Economía y Producción (Ministry of Economy and Production, MECON).

The INDEC also coordinates the Sistema Estadístico Nacional (National Statistics' System, SEN) under principles of normative centralization and governmental division. In the SEN works together national, provincial and local statistical services, and in each province there is a statistics bureau called Dirección de Estadística dependent of the provincial government, that takes and processes information.

Censuses in Argentina are officially held every 10 years. Performed censuses have been in 1869, 1895, 1914, 1947, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1991 (delayed for budget problems) and 2001.

In-between censuses the information is permanently updated with the sampled Encuesta Permanente de Hogares (Permanent Homes' Survey). Official complete reports are delivered every 6 months.

History

The first national statistics' centre was the Dirección General de Estadística (General Directorate of Statistics), established in 1894 as a division of the Ministry of Public Finances. Fifty years later, in 1944, the Consejo Nacional de Estadística y Censos (National Council of Statistics and Censuses) was created, with dependencies on both the Ministry of the Interior and the National Presidential Office. Other agencies were later formed in 1950, 1952, and 1956 before the final creation of the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos in 1968 by Law 17622 and Decrees 3110/70 and 1831/93.

Data manipulation

A conflict was raised within the organization when the government of President Néstor Kirchner replaced Graciela Bevacqua, the Consumer Prices Indicator director (Índice de Precios al Consumidor - IPC) with an external functionary, after an inflation report of 1.5% for January 2007.
The head of the INDEC later resigned, and a new board of directors led by Ana María Edwin was installed by the Ministry of Economy; the board would operate under the supervision of Commerce Secretary Guillermo Moreno. A group of employees promptly protested at what they saw as a violation of INDEC's autonomy, and an attempt by the Minister of Economy under Felisa Miceli to illegally keep inflation indicators under one percent a month.

It's worth noting that the INDEC's headline inflation statistic has, since 2007, differed considerably from not only private estimates; but, also from its own implicit private consumption price index (a variable in the measurement of real GDP), which has risen more consistently with private estimates.

Taken from the first quarter of 2007, each index (from the same quarter the year before) has read as follows:

The discrepancy has led to exchanged accusations of politically-motivated statistical legerdemain between the ruling party and most of the opposition, on both the left and right: government officials have a self-evident incentive to understate the headline CPI figure, while the opposition, in turn, frequently relies on estimates made by figures such as Orlando Ferreres (a former Bunge y Born agribusiness executive and Economic Planning Secretary for a leading opponent, former President Carlos Menem).

The practice, in either case, yielded the ruling party no political benefit, and helped contribute to their loss in the 2009 mid-term elections. An alternative explanation for the otherwise baffling policy could rest with the nation's finances themselves: the national government maintains around US$100 billion in government bonds, much of which is tied in value to either inflation or GDP growth; a 7-point underestimate in inflation, for instance, would save the Central Bank of Argentina around US$3 billion in interest payments, while higher economic growth would only cost added interest on bonds tied to GDP (hence, the discrepancy between the two inflation readings).