Before officials, businessmen and trade unionists, the head of the Palacio de Hacienda remarked that Fair Prices “pretends that 86% of the products that Argentines consume have two certainties: that there are almost 50,000 articles that from February 1 to June 30 are going to increase by only 3.2% per month”. “The other certainty is that there are 2,000 products that they will continue to have Fixed pricesbecause that allows the consumer to take a little more care of their income when choosing on the supermarket gondola,” he added.
In addition, the minister indicated that this second stage of the program “has more rewards and more punishments”. And, in the case of the prizes, he said that “much of the value chain of the food industry and the hygiene and cleaning complex they are going to have a credit program for the production of capital goodswith subsidized rate financing.
Specific characteristics of this new stage of Fair Prices
This relaunch of the program brings forward to February the central guidelines of the agreement announced in November of last year, which In principle it was going to extend until Marchin which sand stipulated an average monthly increase of 4% with the participation of 102 companies.
From the Ministry of Economy they pointed out that the decision to advance the agreements it happened after a evaluation of fiscal targets and reserve accumulationunderstanding that the conditions are in place to standardize all agreements within the framework of an average path and expanding the participation of sectors and companies.
Sergio Massa justified his decision to advance the renewal of the programto extend it until June 30, with the new monthly increase guideline. “It is an objective that can allow us to face the biggest problem that Argentines have, which is inflation”emphasized Massain an act that was held at the CCK Center.
This time the numbers are more ambitious: the average of toIncrease in products drops to 3.2% per month instead of 4%, and the number of companies will increase fivefoldgoing to almost 500.
The extension of the program foresees maintain a basket of 2,000 products with frozen priceswhich is estimated to rise -after extending the agreement- around 9%, and which will be rotating according to the production of each company.
The latter is due to the fact that after the initial experience of Fair Pricesin the Commerce secretary they consider that the products that make up the agreement must rotate to avoid “excess demand”in order to avoid a kind of tension in terms of supply.
In addition, this new stage includes not only mass consumption products, but also incorporates items as sports shoes, cell phones and small appliances, clothing, textiles and widespread supplies.
New control type
In this new stage, the government will have a new control tool. It’s about a developed software together by Arsat and Amazon. This will allow the Secretary of Commerce to carry out a detailed monitoring of price developments and, consequently, of commitment assumed by companies.
This new system makes it possible to observe the evolution of 3.5 million prices in all the country. It will consist of a monitoring board that will allow access to the history of all the products in each of the stores where the products involved are sold. It will also allow you to verify the prices at which it is sold via the web. so the online monitoring they will be given about physical stores and on the virtual.
In this regard, during the act, Sergio Massa commented that some companies “limited the supply of the product in the gondola and then they stated that the problem was that they did not have supplies in the value chain”. And he anticipated that these practices will be sanctioned to “avoid mischief”.
Source: Ambito
