Mon Nov 4, 2002 11:24 pm

Aqui les paso una versi`on periodistica resultado de una entrevista
de dos horas a Reuters, Dow-Jones, Bloomberg y Gesti`on el martes 29
pasado. Creo que esta es una versi`on informada de las razones para
el obituario, y refleja adecuadamente las razones de la decisi`on y
las alternativas a difundir.

> > Peru says got GDP math wrong for 15 years (1)
> > Source: RTR_NA – Reuters North American Securities News
> > Oct 29 11:15
> > By Jude Webber
> > LIMA, Peru, Oct 29 (Reuters) – Peru has admitted it has
> > been reporting its key economic indicator, gross domestic
> > product growth, wrongly for the past 15 years and will publish
> > only partial data from now on until it can correct its sums.
> > Farid Matuk, who took over as head of the government’s
> > National Statistics Institute (INEI) in August, told reporters
> > late on Monday it had been a mistake to publish GDP data on a
> > monthly basis since 1987, when every other country in the world
> > except Canada and Finland published quarterly, because monthly
> > figures contained a wide margin of error.
> > Furthermore, he said the way the monthly figures were
> > calculated had also factored in a “false illusion” of the
> > performance of the service sector, meaning that the official
> > data “was not solid” and could not be trusted.
> > INEI will therefore strip the service and trade segments
> > out of its GDP numbers for the next few months, leaving a
> > snapshot of the performance of only around half of Latin
> > America’s No. 7 economy, which is worth around $54 billion on
> > current reckoning and leans heavily on mining and fishing.
> > “I can’t produce erroneous information. I’d rather partial
> > data that is clear than full data that is murky,” Matuk said.
> > While it rebases its index and sorts out its methodology,
> > INEI will publish only what Matuk called “hard figures” on the
> > detailed monthly output of goods in the primary and secondary
> > sectors — agriculture, fishing, mining, manufacturing,
> > utilities and construction — plus tax data.
> > Data for trade and “other services,” which covers mainly
> > transport, financial and public sector services, will go.
> > The first set of new-look figures, called “gross value
> > added production,” are due out next week, for September.
> > The government of unpopular President Alejandro Toledo says
> > Peru’s economic performance is stellar in a crisis-wracked
> > region, and is forecasting growth of at least 3.7 percent this
> > year, compared with 0.2 percent in 2001. According to current
> > calculations, GDP grew 3.8 percent in August and 4.1 percent in
> > the first eight months compared with the same 2001 periods.
> > NEW 2001 BASE
> > Once INEI has sorted out its sums, it will switch to
> > reporting complete GDP numbers, but on a quarterly basis.
> > Matuk said INEI would revise its 2001 GDP data in the next
> > few weeks, according to the current 1994 base year and method
> > of reckoning. But it will not publish full 2002 GDP data —
> > that will be up to the economy ministry and central bank.
> > He hoped that by July 2003, INEI would be ready to publish
> > the total value of Peru’s economy, in dollar terms, according
> > to a new 2001 base, followed by quarterly GDP data. That was
> > likely to have a delay of six months to begin with.
> > “There was a lot of resistance within INEI (to the new
> > method of calculation),” Matuk said. “But either we perpetuate
> > the fiction or we sort out the information, and I think sorting
> > out the information is the right thing to do.”
> > Current GDP data uses information provided voluntarily by
> > some 30,000 companies, but Matuk said INEI also had extensive
> > data from household and employment surveys from nearly 40,000
> > homes nationwide that would help complete the picture.
> > France’s national statistics agency is providing the
> > software for the new calculations, and is sending a team of
> > experts to Peru next month to help INEI get to work.
> > Matuk said Peru was also working with other countries on a
> > World Bank project to harmonize calculation of purchasing power
> > parity by 2005 based on a basket of 4,000 universal goods.
> > ((Lima newsroom, tel: +511 221 2130, fax +511 221 2133,
> > e-mail: lima.newsroom@reuters.com))
> > REUTERS

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