Pressured by the sharp rise in prices that does not give up, the Minister of Economy,
Sergio Massa
, launched this Friday an
expanded version of Fair Prices
that includes a cap on the increase in fees for private schools.
He did it during an act that he shared with the CGT, the UIA, businessmen and a handful of pro-government mayors
.
"The agreement includes the school basket and the price of private schools throughout Argentina,"
said Massa, who pointed out that "there were provinces that had already authorized increases of up to 40% for March, 18% or 24%" .
Along these lines, the national official specified: "A single criterion was established for the entire country, which will be announced next Wednesday at the Federal Education Council, with a guideline that
lowers the initial average increase by 40%
, but also establishes until June 30 a
path of 3.5% in the case of schools
"
.
During the official presentation that took place at the Kirchner Cultural Center (CCK), Massa explained that the program will run until June 30 and clarified that it was decided to lower "the standard to 3.2%" per month, which "together with the solution of other problems" will allow "to face the biggest problem that Argentines have, which is inflation".
"
Inflation is the worst poison that an economy has
because it is a loss of currency value, a loss of salary value, a loss of equity value, but also because
it means that there are no rules
," said Massa, who was accompanied by the Secretary of Commerce, Matías Tombolini, trade unionists and mayors.
In this context, the head of the Palacio de Hacienda highlighted that the program is the result of a voluntary agreement and sentenced: "
No one in this agreement has to cheat
, because some companies limited the supply of products in the gondolas and said that they did not have supplies in the value chain.
The
new edition covers 49,832 items,
with monthly increases of 3.2%, and a new
basket with 2,000 basic products frozen for 5 months.
The
XL version of Fair Prices includes consumer products, clothing, footwear, construction materials, cell phones, small household appliances, and medicines, among others.
In addition, the National Executive designed new software to
control compliance with the program through virtual monitoring.
This computerized radar, which will partially displace inspections in supermarket branches, was developed by Amazon and Arsat and will allow monitoring excessive increases in some 32,000 consumer items.
From the Secretary of Commerce they specified that the application has the capacity to process 15 million daily data, relieving products of mass consumption in all the points of sale of the chains and wholesale stores.
Initially, the application will relieve only food, drinks, toilet and cleaning.
The computer radar will be complemented with another tool that will allow
tracking the prices offered on the Internet by the companies that agreed with the Government,
since an alert system is incorporated by comparing the values month by month when detecting increases above 3.2% .
Sergio Massa: "We implemented an online verification system"
The Economy Minister announced a new form of price control "for those who don't like physical verifications", which will allow them to carry out virtual monitoring "so nobody is bothered by verification vests".
"They saw someone's vest checking in a supermarket and they panicked," said Massa, referring to those who questioned the control system.
News in development
look also
Fair Prices: create a computer "radar" to control prices online
They launch an XL version of Fair Prices to fight inflation
