Weekly Report - 8 February 2007

Inflation in January was 1.1%. Such a bland announcement would not normally excite much of a reaction but it did, and the reason it did was that the government of President Néstor Kirchner had decided to intervene in the ostensibly autonomous national statistics agency, Indec, days before the figure's release. It replaced the Indec official responsible for calculating the consumer price index with an official loyal to Guillermo Moreno, the trade secretary. The media and the opposition immediately took Kirchner to task, accusing him of manipulating figures ahead of October's presidential elections.