On Monday, some two dozen employees of the government statistics agency INDEC protested outside their downtown offices after the Kirchner administration abruptly replaced Graciela Bevacqua, the longtime manager of the consumer price index.

The protesters said they feared Bevacqua's replacement by an outsider who reportedly has close ties to the Economy Ministry signaled the government may be trying to squeeze more favorable numbers out of the index.

"The government has adopted a totalitarian attitude," the protesting employees said in a communique. "We reject intervention in the CPI. We believe that an institutional coup has occurred against the right to true information on the country's economic conditions."

Roberto Lavagna, Kirchner's former economy minister who is now an opposition presidential candidate for the Oct. 28 election, also sharply criticized the removal of Bevacqua from her post, which the government said it was doing for unspecified "administrative reasons."

"It was very heavy-handed manipulation," Lavagna said.
The Argentine economy has recovered strongly from a 2001-2002 economic crisis but inflation, which ran at 10 percent last year after a 12 percent rise in 2005, remains a major government concern as Kirchner seeks to guide recovery ahead of the presidential vote.

In a country wrenched by past bouts of hyperinflation, critics have already blasted Kirchner for imposing what many see as unorthodox price controls bid to quell inflation.

Among those steps, Kirchner announced in March 2006 that he was imposing a six-month ban on beef exports — a step intended to keep domestic prices low on meat, a major CPI component.

He later eased the ban by this major beef exporting nation, but with inflation still in double digits, he announced recently he was upping an export tax on soybean exporters in another anti-inflation move.

Kirchner said the higher soybean tap would reap millions of dollars (euros) to subsidize costs for bakers and other producers of basic foodstuffs that form other key components of the CPI — throwing his government in conflict with powerful farm groups.

This month Argentina's unionized workers open talks on salary hikes, demanding increases approaching 30 percent that the government is resisting. Lower inflation figures are also seen as undermining salary demands, economists said.

On Monday, the INDEC announced inflation for January had risen a lower-than-expected 1.1 percent, and in a nationally television address hours later Kirchner said he stood by the data. He said the administration would not back down from staff change at INDEC.

"If one has to make changes, we won't be frightened by a few newspaper headlines because we are making changes to improve things," Kirchner said Tuesday of the flap reflected in newspaper coverage awash with independent economists debating the inflation figures.

Argentines for months have argued that inflation is rising faster on goods outside the limited market basic of consumer goods that make up the CPI — eating away at already-devalued salaries dating to the economic crisis

Karina Segura, a 29-year-old unemployed mother of six, watched the protests Monday outside the statistics institute by disgruntled employees. She spent the night with other poor Argentines collecting mountains of plastic soda bottles for recycling and said she didn't trust the figures — no matter who was in charge at INDEC.

"All the prices are going up: milk has gone up, the diapers are more expensive. It's just amazing," said Segura, who makes about US$20 (€15) from a two-day run every week into the capital from a poor outlying neighborhood. "I just don't believe the numbers."

Kirchner, however, reminded Argentines that economic growth is rising at a clip above 8 percent annually and recapped a recent announcement that exports for 2006 topped a record US$46.5 billion (€35.8 billion).