Fair Prices: the Government is ahead to relaunch the program and seeks to expand the agreement

The Ministry of Commerce began negotiating a few weeks ago with mass consumption companies modifications to the Fair Prices agreement. Of the four-month program with increases of around 4%, the government now seeks to lower the increases to 3.2% for all products sold in the supermarket and are off the list of frozen items and extend the program until June. In addition to the modification of the increases, the objective is to add other items such as clothing, footwear and construction with the same pattern of increases and deadlines. However, mass consumption companies want higher increases since, according to company sources, “only the raw material increased by 7%”. Fair Prices is relaunched almost a month before the end date because the decline in inflation does not follow the planned path. Commerce Secretary Matias Tombolini said in dialogue with Radio with You that the latest inflation data generated “concern and disagreement” inside the economic team since the goal of Economy Minister Sergio Massa was to lower inflation by 1 point every two months and this trend was not met. In July, when Massa took office, inflation was at 7.4%, in September, it fell to 6.2%, in November it followed the trend at 4.9% and December ended with a rise of 5.1%. For January, it is estimated that the CPI will be above 5% again, according to the same economic team and the goal of the economic portfolio is to reach April with inflation that “starts with 3”. Even for the economic consultants that the REM relieves of the Central Bank, they do not foresee that inflation will break the floor of 5% throughout the first semester. In addition, the price of meat, which had been depressed in recent months, will begin to rise due to the impact of drought, and this has a high impact on the indicator. Another controversy with the program was the control of compliance with prices and supply, which was done by social groups and unions – although the latter reported that they are no longer in charge of verification. At this point, the Ministry of Commerce reported that Fair Prices reached 90% compliance in its product offer, while the application collected some 6,000 complaints about possible infractions that will be investigated. Meanwhile, the adaptation to signage, which is essential for consumers to capture the product offered, reached 75%, according to data handled by the Ministry of Commerce.

Original source in Spanish