Argentina comes clean on inflation – maybe.
In a new move to help repair its international reputation, Argentina released a revised inflation index yesterday evening after longstanding criticism that it was fudging official statistics.
Economists welcomed the amended index. But the high figure for January a month when the government devalued the peso by 19 percent also triggered concern: Prices soared by 3.7 percent from the month prior, officials said, the highest rate of inflation in nearly 12 years.
Good news, Martín Lousteau, a former economy minister who is now an opposition politician, said on Twitter. The government has recognized the problem. Bad news: prices are increasing at an annual rate equivalent to 55 percent.
With the government hemorrhaging foreign currency reserves, revising this data is key to its efforts to regain access to global financial markets from which it has been locked out since a $95 billion default in 2001.
http://news.yahoo.com/argentina-comes-clean-inflation-maybe-175129730.html