Worried about the rise in inflation in January, Sergio Massa has launched new price containment measures. After announcing last week the renewal of Pricing Right and the caps on monthly increases of about 50,000 products, in the next few hours he will add the launch of a package intended to contain the value of the meat before the increases recorded in recent weeks.
The first part of the announcement consists of a 10% discount for customers on debit card purchases in butcher shops. The operation must be done through a posnet and the consumer you’ll have that payback in your account up to a $10,000 limit. The provision, however, will not be easy to implement considering that the 90% of operations are informal, according to official calculations.
In second place, there will be a 90% discount on the self-employed quota for members of the new scheme, therefore, butcher shops will pay 10% of their tax burden, a benefit that would not exceed $4,000, according to industry calculations. Merchants can also discount 5% of the purchase invoice on the refrigerator Personal Income and Property Tax and use that credit during the 12 month tax period.
The plan is aimed at a sector that left out of the neat cuts, still in force in the main supermarket chains. “The idea is that in this way the price is maintained, while at the same time regulating the fiscal situation of the butcher shops,” they told the Secretary of Commerce.
The measures will come amid an acceleration in prices. The consultants expect a increase between 5.5 and 6% in January, above 5.1% in December. According to a survey by LCG, meat marked the biggest increase since September with a increase from 5.3% weekly in the fifth week of January and contributed 60% to the food increase, which may reflect preemptive hikes in the midst of the fair price rollover.
Massa announced on Friday a new expanded edition of the official program, which covers 49,832 items, with monthly increases of 3.2%, and a new basket with 2,000 frozen staple products for 5 months, the list of which has not yet been released. He also unveiled new software to monitor program compliance through virtual monitoring, all measures that reflect the difficulties in anchoring inflation.
EcoGo estimates that the CPI will be 5.9% in January due to a rebound in, among others, food and beverages, and in particular the end of the meat truce, which had pushed the indicator downwards. “The Fair Prices programme, after performing well in December, showed the first signs of exhaustion in January, once again making explicit the limitation of the instrument to function as an anchor,” said the consultant.
Reduced feed availability for livestock due to drought has led to an increase in cattle slaughter in recent months, which has increased livestock supply and reduced prices. But already in January the reduction of the available stock and the conservation of the animals resulted in a 40% increase in the price of the ranch in the Cañuelas market. This is why today Massa is trying to expand the offer with incentives for farmers.
The fourth stage of the plan will be a non-repayable contribution to cover half of the costs of fattening livestock against a slaughter of 75% put to fatten in feed. They will be paid up to a limit of 70 items per producer. “The problem is that the farmers no longer have grass in the field, so they bring it to the farm to fatten it and pay the rent. The state will invest a lot and pay them half of the food, ” they pointed out in Agriculture.
In the industry, they believe discounting customers might be feasible, but there are doubts about it who will finance it and they warn that it will only reach the “middle class” for the use of electronic means of payment. On the other hand, they consider the tax break to be “irrelevant” because most of the butcher shops are in informality under the monotribute.
Source: Clarin
