Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Lauro Maia/Flickr. Some rights reserved.Does Argentina have a lower rate of poverty than Germany? It seems unlikely, and there were many raised eyebrows when Argentinian President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said, at a UN summit in Rome in June, that her homeland’s national figure had dropped below five percent. Aníbal Fernández, her head of cabinet, later took the claim a step further by confirming that Argentina was indeed bettering Norway, Denmark and Germany in the fight against poverty.
Facts, lies and statistics: these have become key themes on the campaign trail for October’s national election, with the opposition vowing to offer greater transparency than under the current government, led by Fernández since 2007.
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, 2015. Presidencia de la Nación/Flickr. Some rights reserved.Argentina has developed a critical stats problem. The combination of highly partisan press and some very unconvincing official data has created a huge output of untrustworthy information. The country has one of the highest rates of inflation in the world and yet its national statistics office, Indec, has been underestimating the figures for years. Currently the official inflation figure hovers around 15 percent, while independent analysts suggest it could be almost double that. Coming up with alternative figures has led to some independent economists being threatened with fines or jail sentences.
