“The price gaps between the Care Prices program and market prices, where more basic foods are obtained, marked gaps of up to 40%“, pointed out Damián Di Pace, director of Focus Market. “As of June, the minimum vital and mobile wage is adjusted to $45,540. However, for the previous month, the basic food basket was at $48,239. In other words, a month before the adjustment of the minimum wage, the basic basket is already 6% above that amount”, he remarked.
“The rise in prices in the basic food basket correlates with the drop in food sales at sales points of up to 500 m2 of up to 6.6%. On the other hand, the price increases in the metropolitan area are higher than in the interior of the country, where we observe a lower drop in sales in mass consumption. The purchasing power of Argentines in their low and medium socioeconomic levels is being greatly affected by the acceleration of inflation,” added the analyst.
Climb in June
According to various private surveys, food prices continued their upward trend so far in June. In fact, it is estimated that they will climb again around 5% this month. According to the report prepared by the consulting firm LCG, during the first two weeks of the month the item accumulated a rise of 3.4%.
From the firm they highlighted, however, a certain slowdown during the second week: “To be highlighted were the falls in prices observed in three of the ten categories; which added 0.3 pp that were subtracted from the total variation (Vegetables -2.5%, Oils -1.1% and Bakeries -0.8%). These drops come after a week in which the three categories had marked increases greater than 2.5%”.
“The percentage of products that suffered increases decreased last week and stood at 16%. A noteworthy fact is that since the beginning of the year, the percentage of products with increases has been, with two exceptions, above 10% of the basket in each week and, on average, is located at 18% of the total, which marks the high level of inflationary inertia of the economy,” the report added.
Another consulting firm that carries out this type of survey is EcoGo, whose study revealed a variation of 1.3% in the second week of June, which in this case implied an acceleration of 0.3 pp in the margin.
“With this data and considering a weekly variation projection of 1% for the next three weeks of the month, the inflation of food consumed at home in June would climb to 5.0% monthly”, was pointed out.
Meanwhile, according to the analysis of Free Consumers, It is noteworthy that the basic basket that relieves the entity presented a rise of 2.4% in the first half of the month, accumulating a rise of 31% in the year. Warehouse products rose 3.5% in the first fortnight, while meat rose 2.5%. Fruit and vegetables, meanwhile, increased just 0.1%
Source: Ambito
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