Argentina President Macri Throws Open the Books

From a rundown government building in Buenos Aires, a reserved economist named Jorge Todesca is leading a glasnost of sorts in Argentina. A few weeks after winning November elections, President Mauricio Macri—a wealthy businessman and former Buenos Aires mayor—put Todesca in charge of the national statistics institute. Macri cleared Todesca and his ministers to talk freely about the nation’s economic data and just about everything else.

That may seem like the norm in other democracies, but not Argentina. The government of Macri’s predecessor, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, was suspected of manipulating statistics so much that in 2013 Argentina became the first nation to be censured by the International Monetary Fund for inaccurate data. The then-finance minister called the censure “baseless.” Now, Todesca openly discusses recovering the ability to produce believable statistics: “This institution and others draw a line between what’s true and what’s a lie.” Fernández didn’t respond to requests for comment.