In the middle of last year, three weeks before the PASO, all the efforts of the economic area were focused on
containing inflation,
which had reached 6.5% in July and was heading towards 8% in August.
In those days of the campaign, Miguel Pesce, the then president of the Central Bank, did not come up with an idea to
remove the issue of prices from the immediate agenda
.
For this reason, he decided to postpone the publication of the Market Expectations Survey (REM) that the monetary entity had been publishing on the first Friday of each month.
Although it had to be known before August 13 of the elections, it was scheduled for the 15th.
The REM brings together the opinion of some 40 consulting firms and economists about inflation
, the dollar, rates and the level of activity
expected for the coming months.
Pesce not only changed the dates of that month, but starting in August he decided to publish the REM
on the same day
that the Consumer Price Index was released.
With this strategy he directly
partially deactivated the usefulness of the forecasts,
which had been quite pessimistic.
One of the arguments that Pesce used at that time was that
the consulting firms had been wrong
about inflation, with higher calculations than those later reported by INDEC.
Now, Santiago Bausili, the president of the monetary entity,
decided to return to the old tradition of publishing the REM the first week of the month:
the next one will be on February 7, a week before the INDEC releases the January inflation, which is estimated to be around 20%.
Last month's price increase was conditioned by a high statistical drag, of around 9% after the 25.5% in December.
However, according to the consulting firm C&T, there is
a slowdown
that began in the last week of December and continued throughout January.
The increase in retail prices in January was led by leisure, a seasonally key factor in all Januarys, but which this year had a greater increase, of 36.8%, due to the impact of the adjustment of the official exchange rate and the general increase of prices.
The adjustments in public transportation in the GBA, of more than 40%, and the increase in fuel prices also affected.
In the slowdown of the CPI in January, the performance of
Food and Beverages
was key .
These products came from an escalation that made them touch 31% in the last two weeks of December and in January they increased 16.3%.
NE