In the month following the announcement of a new price freeze, the consumer price index (CPI) in Argentina recorded a year-on-year increase of 51.2% in November and 2.5% compared to October, according to the National Statistics Institute. and Censuses (Indec).
According to the institute, the rise in food and beverages had the greatest impact on all sectors, especially in meat and meat products. The monthly evolution of prices in November represents a deceleration of one percentage point in relation to the two months of September and October, when an increase of 3.5% per month was registered, while the interannual variation of prices dropped 0.9 percentage point in relation to to 52.1% of the previous month.
The Argentine government announced in October the price freeze on more than a thousand products, retroactive to the beginning of that month and valid until January 7, 2022. This week, the government decided to suspend the measure and negotiate agreements with the private sector to insure the prices.
According to the official report released on Tuesday (14), goods last month had a positive variation of 2.5% compared to October, while services rose 2.4%, numbers that add up to 53.7% and 44.7%, respectively, in the year-on-year comparison.
Among the increases registered in November, the most notable were in restaurants and hotels (5%), clothing and footwear (4.1%) and household equipment and maintenance (2.7%). But it is the food and non-alcoholic beverage division, with a 2.1% increase in November, that has the biggest impact on the overall index.
The segments that presented the smallest increase in the 11th month of the year were education and communication, both with an increase of 0.8%. By region, the highest monthly inflation rate of 3% was registered in the Northeast, followed by the Pampas (center), with a rate of 2.8%.
In turn, inflation accumulated in the first 11 months of the year was 45.4%, higher than in the entire year of 2020, when consumer prices rose 36.1%.
Although the government of President Alberto Fernández initially projected a 29% price increase for 2021, a target already surpassed, the latest private forecasts collected monthly by the Central Bank indicate that the increase will be 51.1% this year and 52.1 % in 2022.
In this sense, the inflationary increase reported in November by Indec (2.5%) was lower than that projected by the private sector consulted by the Central Bank (3.1%). According to these forecasts, the increase would be 3.4% in December, accelerating in January and February to 3.7% and rising to 4% in March 2022.
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