INDEC chief Marco Lavagna resigns as Argentina delays CPI rebasing plan

Marco Lavagna, director of Argentina’s National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC), resigned unexpectedly, stepping down on Monday after more than six years at the agency, officials and multiple reports said. His departure came just eight days before INDEC was due to publish January’s consumer price index using a revised methodology scheduled to debut on February 10, 2026.

The administration of Economy Minister Luis Caputo moved quickly to put the methodology change on hold. Caputo said the update would be delayed “until the disinflation process is consolidated,” and in radio remarks added, “There is no need to change the index now… it makes virtually no difference.” The minister linked Lavagna’s exit to timing disagreements with President Javier Milei, according to government accounts.

The proposed rebasing would have replaced a CPI basket still anchored in 2004 with weights derived from the 2017-2018 national household expenditure survey, increasing the weight of services relative to goods to better reflect current spending patterns. INDEC officials described the reform as an effort to make the CPI “more faithful to current consumption.” The Central Bank of the Republic of Argentina, via a Chequeado summary reported in news aggregates, acknowledged that applying the new model retrospectively would have produced higher inflation over the past two years — a claim that analysts say warrants direct verification with BCRA and INDEC technical notes.

Pedro Lines, INDEC’s technical director, was named as Lavagna’s successor. A government statement cited by Batimes said, “The appointment of Lines, given his eminently technical profile, ensures institutional continuity, the agency's current statistical operations and its annual advance dissemination schedule.” Lines is described in reporting as a long-serving INDEC technocrat; his full CV and public remarks have not yet been released.

Lavagna, son of former economy minister Roberto Lavagna and appointed by then-president Alberto Fernández in December 2019, thanked staff in a farewell message saying he had decided to “close this chapter” after “six years of hard work and enormous challenges.” He also said the institute had “made progress in improving public statistics and the national statistical system” while acknowledging that some projects remain “still in progress.”

The resignation provoked alarm among INDEC workers. Raúl Llaneza, a workers’ delegate, told La Nación and other outlets that “we are deeply struck by a resignation coming eight days before the release of the new index,” and urged for an INDEC that is “independent from political power.” He described Caputo’s explanation as “awkward,” called staff “alarmed,” and said the justification “lacks technical rigor — it’s political, and we don’t think it’s right.”

Markets reacted to the turmoil. MercoPress reported that Argentine ADRs on Wall Street fell as much as 33% in sharp moves tied to the period’s broader volatility. Economists warn that uncertainty over the CPI methodology and accusations of politicization can erode statistical credibility, complicate inflation expectations and indexation in wages and contracts, and raise sovereign risk premia at a sensitive moment for Argentina’s disinflation program.

The episode layers a technical statistical change onto a tense political backdrop: two other senior INDEC directors resigned over the past year, and local reporting has cited pay freezes and internal unrest. Journalists and analysts say key follow-ups include the full text of Lavagna’s resignation letter, INDEC’s methodological note, Lines’s professional biography, and BCRA analysis to quantify how the rebased CPI would alter recent inflation readings.