The Fund’s work today places Venezuela very comfortable at the top of the podium, since it could reach a year-on-year inflation of 500%. Sudan would be the second most affected economy, with a rate of more than 245%. The last place on the podium would be occupied by Zimbabwe, with 86.7%.
From there is where Argentina could enter to compete strongly. The IMF still maintains the calculation that indicates that prices in the local market would rise 51.7% throughout this year, but this figure is much lower than the forecasts of private consultants.
These great differences are seen, for example, when comparing the Fund’s figure with those of the latest Latinfocus survey, which includes the measurements of banks and consultants.
From there it appears that the average of expectations is around 63.2%, although if the highest point is taken it reaches 82.5%.
The mean of the last Survey of Market Expectations (REM) of the Central Bankeven exceeds that of Latinfocus, and touches 65.7%, 6.2 percentage points more than the figure that it handled last April.
Always taking the calculations of the Monetary Fund as a parameter, this year Turkey (60.5%) and Yemen (59.7%) will surpass Argentina in the annual estimates. Just by meeting the average expectations that the market has today, Argentina would secure fourth place in the ranking.
In other countries, inflation is also making itself felt, although with figures that are clearly lower than those of Argentina. For Russia, for example, the determination to invade Ukraine will not be free, since its inflation rate will be positioned at 21.3% this year.
In the United States, prices could increase an average of 7.7% this year, almost double what was registered in 2021 and six times more than in 2020. In turn, Japan and China would have two of the lowest inflation rates in 2022, with only 1% and 2.1%, respectively.
This marks that, beyond the particular problems of Argentina, inflation is an evil that today fully hits the world economy, with effects that had not been observed at other times.
The International Monetary Fund forecasts that, globally, the inflation rate will average 7.4% this year, although within this context, emerging and developing economies will be the hardest hit by this sustained and widespread increase in prices, since expects them to register 8.7% inflation for this group of countries.
In the most advanced economies, this percentage would stand at 5.7%, a much higher figure than that registered in the three years prior to the pandemic, when it did not exceed 2%. All this goes hand in hand with factors such as the large increase in demand in 2021, a year in which the supply of products was also limited due to restrictions and the shortage of workers.
To this must be added Russia’s attack on Ukraine, which further contracted the availability of raw materials and caused food and energy prices to rise.
Within Argentina, there are very particular factors that are precisely what will lead to advancement in the world ranking. Food has long been one of the main drivers of inflation, and everything indicates that this trend will continue.
According to data handled by the consulting firm EcoGo, in the second week of May food inflation jumped again, and an average rise of 2% was registered, above the 1.2% of the first week of this month and the highest in the last six weeks.
This also led to the cost of the basic food basket growing again in April. In the case of the Total Basic Basket (which measures the poverty line) the increase was 6.2%, which forces a typical family to gather income of $95,260.37 in order not to fall below that line, according to the latest Indec survey.
The cost of the Basic Food Basket (which determines the indigence line) grew 6.7%, and pushed the need for joint salaries for a typical family to $42,526.96.
Source: Ambito
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