After two weeks of relative calm, food and drink prices rebounded strongly between April 1 and 7. A survey by the consulting firm Eco Go indicates that these very sensitive categories of household consumption increased by an average of 2%. On the other hand, LCG, which is measured exclusively in large supermarkets, values increased by 2.5% over the period.
“The first week of April was bad,” says Guido Lorenzo, director of LCG, bluntly. Incorrect data anticipate, according to this specialist, “another month with high inflation”. He alludes to the fact that this Friday, INDEC will announce inflation for March, which private consultants predict at around 7%, with above-average food. March CPI for capital rose 7.1%which for many analysts is an anticipation of the data that will be released on March 14th.
Eco Go identified it the products that drove the increases in the first days of April it was citrus fruit (8.3%), sugar and sweeteners (5.7%), fresh pasta (4.9%), canned tomatoes (4.5%), hake and fresh and frozen offal and fresh bovine offal (4.3% ). Strictly speaking, most categories (21 out of 30) recorded above-average increases.
“Easter crossing and long holidays, difficult start to the month in terms of inflation,” says the report by Eco Go, the consultancy firm led by economist Marina Dal Pogetto. For this EcoGo expects food and beverage inflation of 7% for April and 6.5% in the broad index.
Both Eco Go and LCG stock between 6,000 and 8,000 basic consumer products in large hypermarkets and supermarkets. That means, in the commercial formats where the Fair Prices program is concentratedwhich establishes a maximum increase of 3.2% per month for approximately 50,000 items.
The jump in food has surprised analysts. It happens that both consultants had recorded a general slowdown in the last 15 days, but the trend just stopped. “In early April, the increase averaged nearly 2.5%, accelerating by 0.7 percentage points from the previous week,” the LCG survey said. Menescaldi, from Eco Go, points out that the record in the first week of April (2%)”it is the highest since the third week of February“.
Vegetables (7.9%), take-away meals (3.2%), meats and oils (2.6%) and baked goods, cereals and pasta (2%), lead the weekly growth in the LCG study, which highlights another important element. “What strikes and worries the most is this half of the basket we examined saw an increase during the week“, says Lorenzo and adds: “Core inflation (that is, inflation that does not calculate seasonal increases) can hardly go down from an average monthly value of 6.5%.
The prices of the basket of food and beverages “are sensitive data because they have a direct impact on socio-economic indicators”, explains the director of LCG, since “in the event that income cannot correspond to this rate of increase, poverty and indigence will increase“. Poverty, in fact, 39.2% of the population covered in the second half of 2022according to the latest data released by INDEC.
Eco Go estimates inflation of around 6.5% for April, “driven by increases in prepaid cards (2.36% for all users), private schools (3.35%), domestic services (14%), trains and bus (6.6% indexed to February inflation) and electric (31.1% on average), among others, “which would show an expected slowdown compared to March which, according to our projections, would have been 7, 2%”, underlines Menescaldi.
Source: Clarin
