Fausto Spotorno, Economist and director of the OJF Economic Studies Center, analyzed in an interview with Scope The march of the inflation And while he believes that the CPI can pierce 2%, it also puts certain repairs. It assumes that the economy is in a process of relative price changes, which as it is completed, is difficult to impact the price index.
Journalist: on Friday the inflation fact was known, 2.4%. President Javier Milei proposes that the background data is 1.8% because it is the result of discounting the increase in meat. Is this reading correct?
Fausto Spotorno: It is true that the meat has a very large ingredient within the consumption basket. Then, when it moves, it has an impact on the entire index. But, beyond that discussion, that for me it is more a debate on how to show the number, lOr it is true that these inflation levels around 2% begin to be much more difficult to breakespecially considering that the government is rearranging relative prices. When it had 10% monthly inflation, with a relative price that was 8% behind, the movements of those relative prices did not affect you so much. Now, with these much smaller inflation levels, with a rhythm of devaluation of the official exchange rate of 1% and a exchange gap of 15% or 13%, you realize that there are still many relative prices to adjust and it begins to cost you to lower inflation. In addition to thinking about the flesh, the issue will be in other items, such as education, and later the exit of the stocks, all those external impacts begin to dirty the number of inflation casualties, but that does not mean that at some point it will not pierce 2%.
Q.: Do you think the market shares that look? During the past week movements about the future dollar attributed were seen, according to consultants, around the “Crawling Peg” to 2%. It could be thought that if inflation could break the 2%floor, then the rhythm of devaluation should accompany that movement, and not rise.
FS: I think some of that happens. And there is another topic that is going around and it is the agreement with the IMF. It was clear that there will be fresh silver and that is a very important fact, and here comes the following analysis: What does fresh silver put? What will the IMF ask for in exchange for fresh silver? The IMF is not going to tell you that fresh silver is to keep everything the same, I think behind this comes the output of the stocks or some kind of flexibility.
Q.: The IMF was benevolent against the breach of the goals set under the previous agreement and the same did during the Macri management, starting with the amount granted. Do you think that with this government could adopt a similar position?
FS: Actually, the IMF always puts some intervention mechanism. Recall that Macri put two different mechanisms. One were tenders and the other the flotation between bands and I think the thing will come there. That is the point of the agreement that we do not know and that will be extremely relevant.
P.: ¿Consider the level of secrecy that the Government maintains on the conditions of the agreement?
FS: Yes, it seems healthy for the same reasons why I believe that the “Guzmán Law” is bad, because we suppose that within the agreement there are goals to get out of the stocks, well, that cannot be revealed if it will not be approved, because the market begins to make the market crazy. Actually, by the time the stock exit scheme is revealed, the agreement would have to be operating.
Q.: Alejandro Werner, in an interview with Condo, stated that the fund exaggerated in his request for political support and that he should begin to recognize the political cost when their measures do not work. What do you think about this idea?
FS: It is a super interesting point. The first thing to be clear is that the IMF will not compensate for the demads of local policy, this is the responsibility of each government. The IMF which asks as a guarantee are certain policies, but that does not mean that they are well implemented or that these policies work. Second, it is true that the IMF sometimes works as a great international bureaucracy, something like ark, that is, although it is wrong, it tells you to pay me and then we see.
Q.: How do you see the evolution of the activity during this year?
FS: The activity is recovering. The question is whether it will fall again or economic policies are solid enough to start growing, because we are still in recovery mode. This recovery is heterogeneous because of what we said at the beginning, here there is also a rearrangement of relative prices and that means that we are rearranging not only the prices of the economy, but also the way in which it is spent, consumes produces and produces in Argentina.
Source: Ambito
