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José Manuel Rodríguez de Poo leaves office after tensions with Economy over the measurement of GDP and the CPI
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The Ministry says that the succession will be closed in the coming days and announces a new statute for the body
The president of the National Statistics Institute (INE), Juan Manuel Rodriguez de Poo He has presented his resignation this Monday, according to the ABC newspaper and has been able to confirm this newspaper. After several days of rumors about his imminent dismissal by the Government within the framework of a general restructuring of the INE, Rodríguez de Poo has informed his management team via e-mail of his resignation from the position For personal motives”.
Shortly after, the Ministry of Economy itself, on which the INE depends, has confirmed the news in a statement in which it expresses its purpose of strengthen the state statistical system with legal reform and a new statute for the INE that will be approved in the coming weeks by the Council of Ministers. “The current president of the INE, Juan Manuel Rodríguez Poo, has led this process of modernization and reinforcement of the institution since his appointment in October 2018. Having achieved the objectives, he has expressed his willingness to leave office for personal reasons. A substitution process is being opened for this position, which is expected to close in the coming days”, affirms the department that directs Nadia Calvino in your statement.
Rodríguez Poo’s departure comes after the bewilderment expressed on different occasions by different government representatives, such as the economic vice president, Nadia Calvinoor the Minister of Finance, Maria Jesus Monteroon the latest data from the National contability that, from the point of view of the Executive, they would not be reflecting the real situation of the recovery of the Spanish economy that the tax collection and job creation data were showing. The data for the third quarter of last year, for example, were the subject of an intense upward revision later, at the end of the year after the INE had estimated months before that the economy had ‘punctured’ in the summer (the revision meant passing from an initial estimate of 1.2% quarterly growth to 2.6%, more than double).
From this statistical confusion -which the INE justified in each of its notes by the exceptionality of the pandemic– Some of the main research services in the country also participated. For months, a dialogue had been opened between the Ministry of Economy and the INE for the adequacy of the measurement of GDP in the context of the post-pandemic.
The CPI measurement it had also become a cause of friction due to the INE’s delay in incorporating the free market, in which most consumers participate, into its electricity price measurement methodology. Instead, the CPI only incorporates in its calculations regulated electricity ratewhich has suffered the greatest increase in prices in the last year, which has contributed to triggering inflation that, in the end, ends up having an upward impact on pension spending and on salary negotiations.
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Among the rumors that have preceded the resignation of Rodríguez Poo in recent days, the possibility has been spread that Israel Arroyo, who left the Secretary of State for Social Security last week, would become the president of the INE, a end on which the Government has not ruled.
According to Economy, the reform that it intends to promote to strengthen the state statistical system “is part of the objectives established in the Multiannual Statistical Plan 2021-2024which has been developing since its approval and which establishes as strategic lines the use Big Data and other basic sources of information; the implementation of a new production model adapted to the current data ecosystem; the launch of new statistics and the improvement of existing and the adaptation of regulations and reinforcement of institutional and international cooperation”.