Within the framework of Expoagro, President Javier Milei said on Tuesday that the inflation number, after the December and January figures, will continue to decline and will reach 15% in February.
Is it possible that this price level really exists?
What do economists think and what could happen in March?
Specifically, the President's words were: "When in December (inflation) reached 25%, it was a success, because prices fell in the second week. This month it seems that inflation will be at 15%." In this way , anticipated that accumulated inflation would reach 60 points for the first three months of his mandate.
In general terms, economists point out that this would be a floor.
Many
have close forecasts and others have somewhat higher forecasts.
For example,
Claudio Caprarulo
, economist at the consulting firm
Analytica,
says: “Our projection is very similar in February and March.
Close to
16%
,” he says when asked about the viability of the Price Index (CPI) being at the 15% estimated by the Government in the second month of the year.
According to
Gabriel Caamaño
, an economist at the consulting firm
Ledesma
, responds: “I think it can give
a little above that
, 15% and something more.
Capable,
16% or 17%
.
"That is the consensus of the private sector."
According to the analyst, “to the extent that the devaluation is being left behind, the inflation rate of tradable goods and services has to go at the
crawling
rate (gradual adjustment of the exchange rate) and which
will take time to converge. It is that of non-tradables,
which are more services than goods.
This last one,
the inflation rate of services, is the one that is most difficult for private companies to measure well,”
he warns.
“For this reason, it may be that
the private sector underestimates it in February
and the INDEC inflation rate is a little higher: between
16% or 17%.
”He explained.
In March, according to the expert "the decline will probably slow down for the same reason."
According to the forecast of the
Freedom and Progress Foundation
, the inflationary increase last month, which INDEC will report on Tuesday, March 12, would be
16.8%.
This implies a slowdown of 3.8 percentage points compared to the official measurement in January (20.6%).
“In the evolution of the month, we found that the first week of February presented a substantially high variation, due to the
update of rates in AMBA public transportation
.
Starting in the second week of the month, the data converged to variations in the range of 2% to 3% weekly, maintaining the trend of the last fortnight of January and reaching values similar to those of September 2023.”
According to another study by the Scalabrini Ortiz Center for Economic and Social Studies (CESO), the orthodox shock that the Government is applying - based on a fiscal, salary, exchange and monetary anchor -
will not be enough to lower the price index
because "it does not attack the inertial factors that explain the current inflationary regime".
According to this study,
"in the coming months there will be significant increases in rates for public services, transportation and items such as education,
which have a strong seasonal component," and this "will cause a new round of price increases."
Thus,
in March, the increase would once again be around 20%,
he explained.
The consulting firm ACM also sees inflation "still high although with a downward trend in the coming months," it warned in its latest report.
One of the forecasts that is closest to the reduction intended by the ruling party is the
CPI Online of Bahia Blanca,
which, after analyzing 15,913 prices, detected an average increase of
10.97% in February
, with a cumulative increase of 262.44% year-on-year. .
Also, the consulting firm
Equilibra
announced that the February increase would be
14.5%
and interannual inflation 280%.
Meanwhile,
EcoGo
estimated that February inflation was
15.9%
on average.
Along these lines, for "March we believe it will be
slightly above
, in the 16/17% area," explained
Lucio Garay Méndez
, an analyst at the consulting firm.
For its part, according to the CPI measured by the
Orlando consulting firm Ferreres & Asociados
, February inflation in the GBA was
14.6%
monthly and registered an interannual growth of 270.7%.
NE