“To recover real income, it is urgent to break the inflationary inertia“, was the title of the program proposed by this association made up of economists, unionists, civil servants and other professionals referenced with sectors of the ruling party and progressivism. In their report they pointed out that, in the distributive bid, “workers always lose“.
In this sense, they understood inflation as the “Central problem of the Argentine economy” whose causes are attributed to “the lack of reserves, the maturities of public and private external debt, the agreement with the IMF, as well as the high degree of concentration of the most important marketswith a determining incidence of oligopolistic companies, particularly food”.
Given this, they pointed out that there are “price hike winners“, which would be “minority sectorss that have income in foreign currency “and/or the power to adjust prices and income in pesos due to a dominant position or capacity for speculation.” They further noted that “the pro-market economic orthodoxy“he insists” on focusing on the fiscal deficit and the monetary issue.
In this scenario, they remarked that “real wages fell 18.5% between 2016 and 2022while the prices of the concentrated branches increased 21.3% above the consumer price index”. Considering the total number of unregistered workers as well as wage earners, they indicated that “the royal fall increases to 48.3%”.
“In the case of Minimum salary, vital and movil, the deterioration until February 2023 was 30.4%. When real income series are analyzed, it is possible to observe that these are behind price increases, which explains this deterioration in real wages. In this table, it is evident that the recomposition of salaries must be a central objective of the momentboth registered and unregistered or temporary workers, who are the most affected, without forgetting the same situation of the deferred salaries of retirees,” they add.
They also add that “the International Monetary Fund does not allow the Argentine economy to have the traditional anchors that allow to stop a collapse in prices: interest rates, rates, exchange rates. Under these conditions there is no fundamental solution to the inflationary problem. His comprehensive renegotiation Eliminating conditions to sovereign economic policy decisions, or in its case denouncing it, is essential to carry out without a solution of continuity a non-recessive and non-regressive anti-inflationary strategy”.
Measures of the Economy and Labor Forum against inflation
The Economy and Labor Forum proposed anti-inflationary lines of action. Some of them are:
- Declare immediately food and nutrition emergency.
- Add to the Program Fair Prices Agreements with companies by product, prior to those made by outlets, thus modifying the backbone of the Program. Include nearby businesses and enable consumer complaints.
- Arrange the price freeze of a set of basic basket products produced by oligopolies for a limited period so that the real income of the population can be recomposed.
- Implementation of a program of action, agreement and control of Fair Supplies, relating it specifically to the key diffused inputs, for the national production and value chains.
- Basing the analysis and negotiation of public service feeswarlike only in relation to actual costs, not by automatic adjustments by exchange rate or indexation by international prices. Determine social rates for the energyhe gas and the water.
- Define as a priority food sovereignty and security. The decoupling of the local prices of export products from the international ones must be put urgently.
- accumulate reserves in the BCRAmodifying the current regulations, in order to minimize the use of the few existing currencies in financial payments and private services or in remittance of profits.
- promote the productionnational ion and import substitution of products from the family basket.
- Create a Background Trust financed by progressive taxes according to the highest contributive capacity, to lower prices of the family basket.
- make transparent and systematically analyze costs and prices of products and services central to the economy as a whole and social welfare. Transparently identifying strategic productions and products in which few companies or suppliers hold dominant positions in their value chains.
- Dimension and promote the public intervention in foreign trade administration in sectors in which the country has enormous natural comparative advantages and generate high differential rents due to its global demand.
- Faced with currency limitations and the deepening of asymmetries between large and peripheral countries, a joint action of integrationregional production complementation and complementation.
The report is signed by: Ricardo aronskindJuan Pablo CoastRaul delatorreMarcelo Say CianoMarisa DuarteRobert FelettiCecilia garrigueAugustine HaimovichJulian maggioPablo manzanelliSantiago mancinelliJorge MarchiniFelisa micelihorace rovelliJosé sbatella and William wierzba.
Source: Ambito
