"There's no money".
Javier Milei's government slogan has multiple expressions and one of them is the consumption of meat, a central good in the basket of Argentines whose price showed a significant recomposition in the last four months, forcing consumers to ration purchases.
According to a report from the Chamber of Meat Industry and Commerce of Argentina (Ciccra),
apparent consumption of beef fell by 8.2 percent between February 2023 and February 2024
, and stood at around 349,100. tons of bone-in beef.
To understand the phenomenon there are several variables to consider.
The first that arises is the general context of inflation and fall in purchasing power.
In February, consumer beef prices in Greater Buenos Aires increased by 15 percent
, which adds to the increases of 25 and 19.6 percent that had occurred in December and January respectively.
In price formation there is also an interaction of imperfect variables.
Butchers have to cover rising costs of electricity, expenses and supplies
.
And in the purchase of meat itself, supply and demand play this time in favor of the increase.
In the first two months of the year, according to the Ciccra report,
the beef meat processing industry produced a total of 504,000 tons of bone-in beef
, which represented a decrease of 8,100 tons compared to the first two months of last year, around 3 .8 percent.
In turn, the export sector bid for a larger portion of that production.
In January 2024, 49,571 tons of beef product weight were exported
, 13.5 percent more than the shipments registered in January 2023.
In this context, there is the drop in local consumption, which in February stood at 44.6 kilos per person annualized, the lowest consumption since February 2011. A central piece of information from the Ciccra report, which clearly illustrates the policy that what the current Government has taken regarding beef production, is that the weight of domestic consumption over the total volume produced fell at the beginning of this year to 69.2 percent and is the lowest since at least 1996.
Exports of the first two months they exceeded 30 percent of the total volume produced for the first time at the beginning of the year.