Price Controls in the K Era: From the League of Mayors to the Truckers’ Strike

It’s not on Netflix but it’s not on public television either. The imaginary series “The government imposes controls to lower inflation” goes for his seventeenth season. And it’s still on the bill. It deserves some nominations for Martín Fierro or similar.

The fiction that the government wanted to stop the price increase comes from 2005 In December of the same year, former president Néstor Kirchner presented the “Price Tracking League”. For the announcement, in which he participated, he used nothing less than the White Room of the Casa Rosada 100 municipal leaders plus the ever-ubiquitous Governor Felipe Solá.

Kirchner was concerned, he said, because inflation that year was… 12.3%. It’s true: it had doubled from 6.1% in 2004

.Since, controls have grown and so has inflation. Coincidentally, the more you check, the more inflation. During Kirchner’s mandate, plus the two mandates of Cristina Kirchner, the surveillance of companies has tried to become more rigid. Guillermo Moreno, Axel Kicillof, Augusto Costa, Paula Español, Roberto Feletti, Matías Tombolini. Each of them publicly stated that they had all the information on the companies and that they would be wicked with those who violate the maximum prices, lowered or not in various agreements, programs or simple price lists. Has inflation gone down? No. On the contrary.

The alleged surveillance has tried to become more sophisticated. Paula Español designed a spreadsheet – total excellence – in which companies had to download an infinite amount of data. It did not work. The former secretary of commerce became famous because, measuring tape in hand, He had himself photographed measuring a gondola to calculate which space corresponded to the products made by SMEs. All in the context of a right of the gondola no one knows if it is enforced today.

The “fight” against inflation, or against the companies that create inflation, has opened up creative ideas. It was talked about put greengrocers in YPF stations across the country. The official who proposed it today cuts gas tariff fixing. Or the program remembered “Milanese for everyone” later extended to other products. With or without lies from INDEC, the IPC was not even aware of these titanic efforts by trained officials take care of the table of Argentines.

Inflation has not stopped, on the contrary, as all Argentines know: 9.8% in 2006; 8.5% in 2007 (already with adulterated INDEC numbers on the initiative of Guillermo Moreno and the consent of Néstor Kirchner first and then Cristina Fernández). We jumped to 36.2% in 2016; 20.8% in 2017; 47.6% in 2018; 50.2% in 2019; 36.1% in 2020; 50.9% in 2021 and 94.8% in 2022. True to his style, the government of Alberto Fernández celebrated a few days ago that it did not exceed 100% last year. It was the “lost victory” of inflation.

Meanwhile the officials they expand the fiction. Matías Tombolini today, like his predecessors“do like” that his working life is focused on controlling inflation. Now he has added the truckers’ union to the task. The truckers make their own contribution to the narrative. They pretend to control the stocks, when in reality they are sending signals that they are willing to squeeze anyone, not to check prices, of course.

It’s been 17 years: From those leagues of mayors to these logistical shock forces, the end of the story is known.