After knowing the July inflation datathe Ministry of Commerce will enable the entirety of the “Clear Prices” platform and would allow consumers to consult 12 million prices on a daily basis. The resolution will be made official through the Official Gazette in the next few hours, as confirmed by Scope.
The “Clear Prices” page allows consumers to access a list of products with prices limited to the requested area and, as of this modification, the complete list will be accessible. The current management of the Secretariat in charge of Pablo Lavigne, improved the platform that is currently in place to make it user-friendly.
The The database is fed by 12 million prices reported daily by 3,600 supermarkets across the country. This system began to be developed in 2016.
The objective is to offer consumers more tools to better evaluate the prices of the products they require.
There will be no change for supermarkets, as they have been doing this on a daily basis, but there will be a change for consumers, who will be able to have full access to this database, which is updated daily. This information can be used to create comparative analysis of prices between different stores.
Clear pricing: the background
The price system was created with Mauricio Macri in 2016 and the person in charge of Commerce was Miguel Braun. With this regulation, businesses that sell mass consumption products at retail, with the exception of micro, small and medium-sized companies, are obliged to report the daily prices of each of the items they offer. This is how, after the publication of the SEPA, Precios Claros, the online information system for consumers, was launched in May of that same year.
According to that website, which is still currentyou can check the prices of more than 23,000 productsand consumers can check the prices of a single product or create a list to compare prices in the 30 stores closest to their location, to decide where to buy best. Also Claims may be made for inconsistencies in the data reported for pricessuch as mismatched prices, products present on the shelf not reported, branches without data or products with missing prices on the shelf, as well as making suggestions to improve the functioning of the system.
Inflation and the fall in consumption
This measure does not go unnoticed in the current context of 4% inflation and the fall in supermarket consumption. According to economic analysts, the 4% may be a difficult threshold for the Government to break, which seeks to see prices advance by 2% per month, in line with the “crawling peg”.
Recently, at the end of July, supermarket owners held a meeting with Luis Caputo, the Minister of Economy, where they told him about the drop in sales. According to Scentia, the loss of purchasing power and the recession continue to have a direct impact on mass consumption and the drop in sales in these establishments was reported to be 12.4% in July.
At that meeting, Caputo confirmed that “there are no macroeconomic reasons” for inflation. That is why, through some actions, competition is being strengthened within the sector so that it is the consumer who sets a price limit in his purchasing decision and thus indirectly impact the reduction of inflation.
Source: Ambito
