Martin Bidegaray
05/14/2021 10:41 AM
Clarín.com
Economy
Updated 05/14/2021 10:54 AM
Over the weekend, when YPF finishes applying its 6% increase in pumps, the company will have already completed
a dozen raises in 9 months
.
In mid-August 2020, a liter of super naphtha from the oil company was available for $ 53.47 at the brand's own stations in the City of Buenos Aires.
From Monday, that same product
will not go below $ 90
.
From end to end,
the increase will be around 70%.
The first touch-up was on August 19 and from there there were
increases every month
.
In January and February, there were two recompositions, although one was for tax purposes.
The rise of 70% between August 2020 and May 2021 exceeds the accumulated inflation in those 9 months, the dollar or soybeans.
According to the company, the palliative is that there will be no more increases for this year.
And that the rise in 2021 will be below the inflation that Martín Guzmán estimated of 29% for this year.
Fuel prices are always frozen before electoral periods.
But,
once the elections are over, they are usually modified.
This is what happened in the last decade.
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If this government repeats the behavior of the Kirchner administrations, in November (after the elections) or in December there would be another rise, failing to fulfill the promise that there will be no more "during this year."
The 70% increase in fuels
exceeds the accumulated inflation between 2020 and 2021
(36% last year and 17.8% until April of this year), the variation of the dollar and even the increase in the price of soybeans.
But if it doesn't rise again this year, fuels are likely to fall short of the 2020-2021 cost of living hike.
Meanwhile,
the dollar rose 58% since January 1 and soybeans, just below 70%.
Guillermo Nielsen, the first president of YPF in the Alberto Fernández administration, wanted to carry out a price increase since December 2019. The directors of the political wing prevented him from doing so and only accepted it in August 2020,
when Sergio Affronti had already taken over as CEO
of the company. This attempt to increase was the first episode of disagreement between Nielsen and other layers of leadership, although there were later.
On a national map, YPF rose 4.5% in August - after a nearly 9-month freeze - and then rose an average 3.5% between September, October and January.
In November it retouched by 2.5%, but in December it did so by 4.5%.
In January and February it made two increases each month, one for own margins and the other for tax adjustment.
From March to May, a national average of 5% per month was defined,
although the final result is sometimes higher:
in March it was between 7% and 8% in Buenos Aires and
something similar will happen in May.
In the
United States, fuel prices rose 50% year-on-year
, between April 2021 and the same month in 2020.
In front of investors, YPF's staff accepted that
prices were still between 15% and 20% below in dollars
compared to the price of a barrel of crude oil.
That ratio will improve after the increase made this weekend.
Fuel sales are also 15-20% below pre-quarantine levels.
The drop is less in diesel - used by the field - than in gasoline, according to the stationers and YPF.
The objective of YPF's leadership is that the liter of gasoline remains close to the dollar at the official exchange rate.
It has already reached it with "premium" gasoline.
During the period 2012-2015 (under the presidency of Miguel Galuccio), YPF applied the highest price increases in dollars.
"We are returning to certain historical averages of prices (in dollars) although we are still below the period 2017 to 2019 in recent years," said Sergio Affronti, CEO of the company at the conference of its investors.
According to his words, the previous administration of YPF (headed by Miguel Angel Gutiérrez)
increased less in dollars than investors would have wanted.
NE
Look also
YPF: there is a new 6% increase in gasoline since Saturday
The president of YPF defended the rise in gasoline: "It will increase less than the inflation of the Budget"
