Feletti begins to negotiate the way out of the price freeze

On Friday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a statement in which it validated a “coordination of prices and wages” as the Government had been proposing to try to placate inflation. Consequently, Roberto Feletti will aim to begin outlining during this week what will happen after January 7 when the freezing of more than 1400 products ends.
“In this regard, there was a general understanding of the need to gradually and sustainably improve public finances, while at the same time leading to much-needed investments in infrastructure, technology and targeted social spending. Addressing persistent and high inflation requires a multi-pronged approach that involves a reduction in monetary financing of the fiscal deficit, adequate monetary policy with positive real interest rates, and coordination of prices and wages,” the IMF said in its statement.

For his part, the Secretary of Domestic Trade, Roberto Feletti, will begin this week to negotiate with companies the exit of the price freeze that he imposed as soon as he arrived at his position. Throughout these days, the official will receive in his office representatives of the companies to analyze the lists of products with their prices, which will have to take effect from January 8 of next year. In this way, the new consensus basket is the one that will serve as a guide in supermarkets for consumers and it is the traditional Care Prices program whose values are negotiated with the supplier firms. According to private data, it is estimated that the prices administered under some of the government’s programs represent between 8% and 12% of the total supply among large retail stores.

Last week, Internal Trade added to the +Prices Care program a series of mass consumption products at affordable prices, with greater demand during the celebrations of Christmas and New Year. The new conformation includes 111 new products and cancels another 261, leaving the final list at 1,332; quantity that varies according to the commercialization carried out by the companies in each province. Sources close to Feletti stressed that “there is a continuous dialogue with companies in the sector and that work continues on the format that the program will have once its first phase ends, on January 7.” “The objective is that the boost in domestic consumption promoted by the Government, one of the most relevant foundations of the growth of the economy, does not occur to the detriment of the income of the workers,” they said in Internal Trade.
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Original source in Spanish