Recent estimates of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on economic growth in Argentina and Venezuela contain "errors and bias," according to a case study released Wednesday by a private agency based in Washington D.C.

"One can hardly see the pattern of these large and repeated mistakes, particularly for Argentina since 1999 and Venezuela since 2003, and one wonder what happened," said
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).

Weisbrot, coauthor with David Rosnick of a paper entitled "Political prognosis? IMF mistaken projections on development for Argentina and Venezuela," suggests that the IMF should deal with this issue during its meeting of the Board of Governors to be held in April.

"Otherwise, the queries on reliability and objectiveness of its forecast will be in question," said in a written statement when releasing the report.

In the Venezuelan case, IMF has spread "significant, persistent underestimates" of the domestic economic growth for 2004, 2005 and 2006 at 10.6, 6.8 and 5.8 percent, respectively.