Concerned about the rise in inflation in January, Sergio Massa launched new measures to contain prices.
After announcing last week the renewal of Fair Prices and the caps on monthly increases of some 50,000 products, in the next few hours it will add the
launch of a package intended to contain the value of meat
in the face of increases registered in recent weeks.
The first leg of the ad consists of a
10% discount for customers on their debit card purchases
at butcher shops.
The operation must be done through a posnet and the consumer
will have this refund in his account up to a maximum of $10,000.
The measure, however, will not be easy to implement considering that
90% of operations are informal,
according to official calculations.
Secondly,
there will be a 90% discount in the self-employed quota for adherents to the new regime,
so butcher shops will pay 10% of their tax burden, a benefit that would not exceed $4,000, according to industry calculations. .
Merchants will also be able to deduct 5% of the purchase invoice from the refrigerator
from the Income Tax and Personal Assets, and use that credit during the 12-month fiscal period.
The plan points to a sector that
was left out of the careful cuts
, still in force in the main supermarket chains.
"The idea is that in this way the price is maintained, while regularizing the fiscal situation of the butcher shops," they said in the Secretary of Commerce.
The measures will come amid an acceleration in prices.
Consultants forecast a
rise of between 5.5 and 6% in January
, above the 5.1% in December.
According to a survey by LCG, meat marked the biggest increase since September with a
weekly increase of 5.3%
in the fifth week of January and contributed 60% to the increase in food, which could reflect preventive increases in the midst of the renewal of Fair Prices.
Massa announced last Friday a new expanded edition of the official program, which covers 49,832 items, with monthly increases of 3.2%, and a new basket with 2,000 basic products frozen for 5 months, the list of which has not yet been released.
He also presented new software to control compliance with the program through virtual monitoring, all measures that reflect the difficulties in anchoring inflation.
EcoGo estimates that the CPI
will be 5.9%
in January due to a rebound in food and beverages, among other items, and in particular due to the end of the truce in meat, which had pushed the indicator down.
"The Fair Prices program, after having had good results in December, showed its first signs of exhaustion in January, once again making explicit the limitation of the tool to function as an anchor," said the consultant.
The lower availability of cattle feed due to the drought has led to more cattle slaughter in recent months, which has increased the supply of cattle and reduced prices.
But already in January
the reduction of the available stock and the retention of animals translated into a 40% increase in the price of the ranch in the Cañuelas Market.
For this reason, Massa is now seeking to expand the offer with incentives for farmers.
The fourth leg of the plan will be a
non-reimbursable contribution to cover half the cost of fattening cattle
against a 75% slaughter put to fattening in feedlot.
They will be paid
up to a maximum of 70 heads per producer.
"The issue is that ranchers don't have more grass in the field, so they take it to the feedlot to fatten it up and pay rent, the State is going to invest a lot and it's going to pay them half of the food," they pointed out in Agriculture.
In the industry, they believe that the discount to customers could be viable, but there are doubts about
who will finance it and they warn that it will only reach the "middle class"
due to the use of electronic means of payment.
On the other hand, they consider that the tax relief is "irrelevant" because most of the butcher shops are
informal under the monotribute
.
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