“The proportion of products with increases decreased compared to the previous week, when it had reached 21%. In this last week, 18% of the basket had an increase in its prices, maintaining this inertia implies that food prices adjust on average every 1.2 months”, they explained from LCG.
A similar variation was recorded by the Index of Supermarket Prices carried out by the Center for Economic and Social Studies Scalabrini Ortíz (CESO), which showed an increase of 1.1% in the first week of May (from 2 to 9), accumulating a rise of 4.3% in the last four weeks. “The value of around 1%-1.1% per week is the new cruising speed, one step higher than before the international shock. The monthly variation (4.3%) reflects this price floor in supermarkets”, remarked the report.
“In the last week, both Fresh Foods (+1.5%), Dry Foods (+1.4%), and Beverages (+2.0%), once again distanced themselves from the rest of the products, in increases above the weekly average”, added the study, in which it was highlighted: “Alcoholic beverages increased by 3.8%. Regarding the price of Meat, this has a much lower weekly variation (+0.2%) than that of the previous week (+1.4%), however, it is an item that registers a monthly variation much higher than the average (+5.1%), in the absence of measures that can control prices in the sector and strong resistance of agricultural entities to any intervention”.
From the CESO they clarified, in any case, that in order to stipulate the impact that these rises may have on the CPI reported by INDEC, “Other items such as fuel, education, clothing, entertainment, basic services, etc. must be considered. Although May is just a few days away, there are already several increases in regulated prices that put a high floor in May, probably higher than in April: CNG (15%), telephony, internet and cable television (9.5%) , prepaid medicine (8%), private education in the province of Buenos Aires (25%) and fuels”.
Basic basket and a strong inertia
The increases in food is one of the components that adds pressure to the CPI and, in addition, hits squarely against the values of the basic baskets and, therefore, affects the levels of poverty.
In this sense, according to the Free Consumers group, the food basket rose 6.2% in April and accumulated a rise of 22.4% so far this year. A fact that, if 6% inflation for April is considered, is in line with the rise in the CPI published by INDEC.
With this scenario, the consultants project that inflation will continue at high levels in the coming months. This was explained days ago by Santiago Manoukian, economist at Ecolatina: “Although in May it should slow down again, we expect inflation to remain at high levels, hindering the recovery of purchasing power and threatening exchange rate competitiveness. Going forward, the upward revisions in the guidelines agreed upon in the joint negotiations will be added to the strong inertia that comes from inflation, added to the extra fuel that will be provided by the increases in public services and the greater indexation of the dollar, in a context of little power of fire of the control measures in the face of the lack of an anchor to stabilize expectations, a worrying distortion of relative prices and external pressures due to high international prices. Thus, inflation in 2022 is on track to be the highest in the last 30 years.”
Source: Ambito
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