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Argentine gov't slams independent poverty number as false

Xinhua, July 16, 2015 Adjust font size:

Argentina's cabinet chief on Wednesday dismissed a report on poverty, carried out by the Catholic University of Argentina (UCA), as "false".

The report states that 28.7 percent of the South American country's population are living in poverty.

In a sharp contrast to these figures, Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said in June that poverty affected 4.7 percent of the country's population.

"The report is false, it is not close to reality...and the calculation is awful. There is no possibility of it really representing what is happening in Argentina," said Anibal Fernandez, chief of the Cabinet of Ministers.

On Tuesday, the UCA published its annual study carried out by the Observatory for Argentina's Social Debt (ODSA).

In 2014, the same report announced that poverty affected 27.4 percent of Argentina's population. For several years, the UCA findings have been far higher than the official poverty figures published by Indec, the country's statistics bureau.

However, this latest version of the report has met with the ire of the government, as Fernandez said that the UCA "should be embarrassed for bragging about it".

He flatly denied that 28.7 percent of the population, or around 12.3 million people, were living in poverty.

Official data of poverty indexes from the Argentine government have been absent since December 2013.

Earlier this year, Economy Minister Axel Kicillof said that these reports only served to "stigmatize" the poor and destitute members of society.

Argentina's cabinet chief had already lost his cool over the issue after a group of Indec employees released an independent report in April that put the poverty rate at 25.1 percent.

He slammed the report as "a lie, just like many others that throw figures around", according to Argentinean daily Infobae.

Upon presenting the report on Tuesday, the ODSA's chief investigator, Agustin Salvia, said that growing poverty in Argentina showed no signs of abating, despite the government having boosted social measures to tackle the issue.

Salvia added that the main driver for increased poverty were factors such as inflation and a lack of job opportunities. Endi