2023-09-18 19:21:43
The statistical controversies in which the INE has been involved during the last three years have had such an impact on the image of the institution that the one who was its president during the hardest times of the pandemic, Juan Manuel Rodríguez Poo, came to present his He resigned from the position in the summer of last year after months of controversy between the organization and the Ministry of Economy over two of the most relevant data to check the pulse of the situation that Spain was going through: the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). , that is, the growth of the country; and the one that has become more important in recent months, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures inflation.
The department led by Vice President Nadia Calviño described this movement as a “reinforcement” of the institution and ruled out interference. “Here there has been no pressure and there has been recognition of the work,” government sources alleged. A few weeks later, Elena Manzanera, from the Andalusian Statistics Agency, was appointed to the position.
Until then, his predecessor had to deal even with the more or less veiled accusations of some ministers, who privately pointed out the organization’s inaccuracies. Also from the Bank of Spain: in October 2021, the governor, Pablo Hernández de Cos, warned that there would be a “significant downward revision of growth” in Spain for that year after the modification of the records carried out by the INE in the second quarter and the calls for attention made by various international organizations regarding the evolution of GDP.
But the most shocking episode arose due to inflation, at the beginning of 2022, when prices still did not rise anywhere near what they rose that summer, above 10%. In one of its reports, CaixaBank Research indicated that the INE had overestimated the average inflation for the year 2021 by almost one point because the organization had not correctly measured the evolution of electricity prices, which “generated a clear upward bias in the CPI estimate during 2021.
In reality, the INE measured electricity inflation only with regulated contracts, which represent less than 40% of the total, and left out the rest of the free rates, not included. Statistics responded with an unusual statement in which it defended the “clear and precise methodology”, in accordance with European rules, with which it calculated the CPI. For months, the INE and the electricity companies were polishing the data of these free electricity rates to incorporate them into the inflation estimate until they finally did so at the beginning of this year, now with the new president at the head of the institution.
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