IN AN APPARENT REVERSAL of its attitude towards the IMF in recent years, Argentina is seeking assistance from the organisation to overhaul the country’s inflation data.

After paying off its debt to the IMF in 2006, Argentina shunned the organisation for the intervening years, according the the Financial Times.

Argentina’s government blamed the IMF’s policies for the driving the country into an economic crisis and default in 2001.

Yesterday, its economy minister Amado Boudou confirmed that his government has requested “technical assistance” from the IMF “for the design of a nationwide price index”. The current index is widely discredited because it only uses data gleaned from the greater Buenos Aires area.

Bloomberg reports that Boudou said: “There was a need to make this leap in quality so it could represent what’s going on in the whole country”.

Reuters reports that Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez announced last week that the country had convinced the Paris Club of creditor nations to renegotiate its near-€7bn in defaulted debt without the IMF’s involvement.

An IMF team is expected to travel to Argentina next month.