LatinNews Daily Report - 23 December 2013

ECONOMY | INE chief denies inflation massage. Elías Eljuri, the head of Venezuela’s national statistics institute (INE), denied on 22 December that the delay in the publication of the latest inflation figures was in any way related to INE/central bank manipulation of the figures, which were due on 20 December but have yet to appear. Eljuri said the data would be released today (23 December), explaining that the delay owed to the fact that November was “an atypical month” and that the agency had to “revise the valuation of some indicators” at a time when the government led by President Nicolás Maduro had intervened in several consumer sectors, led by the household appliances sector, in a crackdown on alleged price abuse. Eljuri admitted to supply shortages in the country: “In this country there shouldn’t be shortages with all the imports, but there is, of some products”. There is evidence that food price inflation remains very high despite all the official efforts to boost supplies. The central bank’s headline national consumer price index (INPC) rose 5.1% month-on-month and 54.3% year-on-year in October. Local press reports suggest it was between 2.5% and 3.5% month-on-month in November, with an annual rate of 59%.