The national government acknowledged that the 6.6% inflation figure for February is "very bad" and higher than it expected before the number was known.
"It is a data that
seems very bad to us, it was not expected.
The Government continues with the commitment to advance in controlling prices, inflation, in which inflation goes down and prices do not continue to rise," said Gabriela Cerruti.
In her usual conference at Casa Rosada, the spokeswoman also acknowledged that the explanations are not "excuses" given the strong impact that rising prices have on the daily economy of people.
However, he maintained that the increase in the price of meat due to the drought, like that of milk, had an impact on the final inflation number for the month of February.
The consumer price index registered a rise of 6.6%.
Thus, the interannual variation reached 102.5%, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses.
Gabriela Cerruti, Spokesperson for the Argentine Presidency, spoke about the rise in prices.
Cerruti explained that meat, due to the drought, increased almost 20 points and that this influenced one point of the total inflation index and that somehow the same thing happened with dairy prices.
In addition, he maintained that another impact was the increase in telecommunications.
There he complained that the Government cannot regulate something that it considers an essential service.
"The telephone, cable, and web services companies continue to indiscriminately increase the price for users, due to the fact that precautionary measures are in force that do not allow the DNU of the national government to be applied," he said.
The spokeswoman maintained that President Alberto Fernández and the Economy Minister, Sergio Massa, are working "side by side" to resolve a situation that he defined as complex.
The drought, the war, the bank crisis in Europe, are some of the things that influence the local economy, explained Cerruti, although he highlighted the macroeconomic numbers.
"The government understands that it makes daily life, forecasting and the mood of the people very difficult and how to move with these increases, that is why the Government is committed to continue supporting the macroeconomic numbers that indicate that there should not be these inflation levels," he said.
In this sense, he pointed out economic growth as one of the positive variables and defended the Fair Prices program as one of the measures to alleviate the inflationary impact.
The interannual variation reached 102.5%, as reported by INDEC, it is the highest interannual inflation in 32 years.
The last time it had reached those levels was in October 1991, when Domingo Cavallo was Economy Minister during the Menem administration.
He was already governing the convertibility plan and inflation was beginning to subside from hyper.
When asked about the possibility of new announcements by Minister Massa, Cerruti responded that "the government analyzes all the variables to deal with the situation that is the main concern of Argentines."
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