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What inflation lacked: changing the index a la Guillermo Moreno

2021-05-16T19:56:09.421Z


There is no place where the failure of the Government in its fight against inflation does not jump. Especially in the cost of food. And what solution does Christianity propose? Change the price index.


Alcadio Oña

05/15/2021 1:36 PM

  • Clarín.com

  • Economy

Updated 05/15/2021 1:36 PM

It sounds disproportionate, offensive if it is claimed credible and it is, in the end, too obvious a campaign resource to say that the Government is going to

"fill the table of Argentines with quality food

.

"

That, nothing less than filling the family table with food, in a country with

20 million poor people

, promised the Secretary of Commerce, Paula Español, when announcing the launch of a

traveling fair

with bags of fruits, vegetables and cuts of meat at greatly discounted prices.

"For now, the Federal Traveling Market remains in the AMBA but the idea is that it travels through all the provinces," said Español, an official who, although dependent on the Minister of Productive Development, Matías Kulfas,

circulates freely with Axel Kicillof's plate

, that is, with Cristina Kirchner's. Without even paying attention to appearances, the route of the trucks confirmed from the outset that it is an operation aimed at

reinforcing the electoral chances of the Vice President in the Province

: among other municipalities governed by the ruling party, the raid has already touched Merlo, Avellaneda, Quilmes, Lomas de Zamora, Escobar and San Martín.

It is assumed that at least in honor of the name, the so-called Federal Mobile Market will not leave out the City of Buenos or any governor or mayor who militates in a political suit other than the official one, even if the move would have started with those of the Frente de Todos .

And if it is not pure campaign as it smells everywhere, the INDEC indexes reveal that Español and company

have late or very late remembered the Argentine table

.

Said without turning, that of the trucks is pure electoral campaign.

With 4.7% in April, the index that measures the cost of food shows an increase of 68.5%

since Kirchnerism and its variants assumed the task of governing.

There we have,

clearly and without Guillermo Moreno-style drawings,

a sample of the state in which the Argentine table really is, after less than a year and a half of K administration.

Just to put some products of the traveling fair in perspective, since January 2020 we have an average increase of 91% in the price of fruits and one of 83% for vegetables.

Among the cuts of meat, 109% appear in the modest minced meat and 120% in the still very Argentine asado, that is, twice or twice as long.

And in case someone asks, the black board also says: kilo of chicken, 74%;

milk sachet, 50%;

yerba mate, 80% and common wine, 107.5%.

Also in INDEC figures, another way to see where the Argentines' table went is to then look at how much of the household consumption goes to food and beverages, especially food.

The general account reads 33% of the population,

but it rises to 45.2% of the total when it comes to consumption at the bottom rung of the social pyramid

, that is, where the very low-income layers are, who spend a good part of the money. that they have in basic consumptions.

Mirror of inequality,

in the upper step of the pyramid, food only represents 26.6% of family spending.

Inflation, it is known, is the emergence of economic imbalances, problems and disabilities accumulated for years and a phenomenon, here already crystallized, that hits almost without exception on the middle and lower sectors.

Now we have an index that for months has been in the area of ​​4% per month and that

flies at heights of 46.3% per year.

It is true that the Government received an explosive package and that not everything is the work of its administration.

But it is rigorously true, too, that if he did not exacerbate the mess, he

is far from having found a solution or something close to a solution

and, furthermore, that he knew what he was going to find.

And not to mention that he came up with a plan, something impossible from the beginning as the growing

differences of a disorderly team

prove

.

It is clear that

inflation passes above the freezing or quasi-freezing of rates that the Government is testing

.

Official statistics reveal that in the Capital and Greater Buenos Aires, where the regime is tougher, the chapter that registers the increases in electricity and gas barely moved 3.6% between April 2020 and April 2021 against a price index that there it jumped to 44.2%.

The very recent anti-inflationary trial of stepping on the official dollar does not show much either.

The numbers for the first four months show that while that dollar rose 11%, inflation grew 17.6%, almost 8 points more in just four months.

Beware of the effect of delaying the exchange rate too much, experience itself would warn.

Of the same or similar species, we have, then,

average salaries that run 13 percentage points behind inflation

, strong unions such as Commercial Employees, the UOM and Construction that, to accompany the Government's positions, have agreed clearly short rises of 30-35% in three stages and national states that, measured by the last fiscal report of the Economy, have fallen 9 points against 2020.

Someone or a few win, surely.

But this is not at all the case of the always lagging army of

retirees and pensioners

, which, according to Social Security expenses in the comparison January-March of this year with the same period of 2020, lost by about 12 points compared to the price index.

Here, where it anchors 41% of total public spending, including interest on debt and investments, the fiscal adjustment appears clear and indisputable, and one of the worst.

Data and more data from this reloaded bulletin, now the baskets, let's say subsistence or subsistence, arrive with great difficulty.

Unleashed, like the consumer price index,

the basic food that determines the poverty threshold became more expensive by 48% from March 2020 to last March and 45% that measures poverty.

The very deteriorated picture presented by the large economic, labor and social indicators appears behind a poverty that grew from 32 to 42%, between 2018 and 2020, with a scale of 35.5% in 2019. That is, an impressive 10 percentage points in just three years or 15, if the focus is on the parties that make up the huge agglomeration of Greater Buenos Aires.

Nothing by chance, then,

Argentina has led to a poverty already with a structural format

that orbits around 40% and that has more to continue increasing than to decrease.

"You will have to get used to a different country, in which the composition of the social segments has changed and will change radically," says a consultant who has been watching this film for years.

It says more, like that the middle class is split and with a piece that fell into a poverty zone and, also, that he needs an extra monthly income of 25,000 pesos to go up to the lowest floor of the class to which he always belonged.

And he ends: “With 15,000 pesos you will improve, but you are still below the poverty line.

And the worst thing is that

with the ironing job for many any plus is unattainable ”.

Thus we enter the second wave of the pandemic, with families that are more indebted and that savings have been consumed, with private consumption at half-speed that did not recover from the first wave and an economic activity that, in the best of cases,

barely will turn half the fall of 2020

.

Said in another way, things that everyone knows even if they do not suffer in the same way.

And what solution does the Instituto Patria, chaired by Cristina Kirchner

,

propose in the

face of such a crisis?

More than a way out, a shortcut:

get a new price index

"due to arbitrariness and discretion presented by the current INDEC methodology."

It sounds nonsensical, but it is seen that coming from Christianity, even nonsense should be taken seriously.

Source: clarin

All business articles on 2021-05-16

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