The rise of the dollar in the last week left “without prices” to different products of the economy. Since Thursday, the suppliers of several items have warned their customers that in the midst of the skyrocketing exchange rate “No orders will be taken”. Also, many have tried to upgrade their prices to the rate of increase of the US street ticket, but they alerted hikes of between 30% and 40% this week.
The situation repeats itself at every moment of exchange turbulence, but in a context of inflation that does not drop to 7% per month, it becomes more relevant. There are many examples: from increases of more than 30% in tires, Until stationary in material pen listings. Suppliers also fear a stronger inventory adjustment that will prevent them from replenishing the goods, so they are shutting down operations for now.
After weeks of relative calm, the parallel dollar is up 11% over the past five days. Market jitters heightened after last Thursday the government added a new peg to already ultra-tightened FX bonds and deferred payments for import and freight servicesa measure that will help him save almost 2,000 million dollars.
The impact was immediately felt in the tourism segment. late friday, several travel agencies informed their customers that they would stop receiving payments in pesos to cancel overseas land transportation purchases, and that only US dollars would be levied for these types of international tickets. “We hope the situation normalizes soon,” they said.
However, fears are growing among sectors that, far from normalizing, import restrictions will increase in the rest of the year. “In line with what has happened in recent months, the government will continue to use imports as an adjustment variable”they indicated in their weekly report to the consultancy Invecq.
Along the same lines, IERAL economists have warned that in terms of exports, imports and activity, this year’s scenario will be very similar to that experienced by Argentina in 2009.
“The current drought will probably have more serious effects than those recorded between 2008 and 2009. On this occasion, in addition to reducing exports and imports, deepening the recession in the level of economic activity, deteriorating tax accounts and generating losses of reserves in the Central bank; it will not help reduce inflation as it did 14 years ago,” the study explained.
Indeed, as reported clarion, there were strong remarks last week. In the first three weeks of April, according to LCG, all of the foods and beverages surveyed (about 8,000 different categories) changed in price at least once. Some have even been touched up twice, in a dynamic that has been heating up since the beginning of the year.
Inflation in March reached 7.7%, the highest record since 1991. Prices in April are not giving up. In the first 7 days of the month and after two weeks of relative calm, food and beverage prices rebounded strongly. Eco Go indicated that these sensitive household consumption categories increased by an average of 2%. In contrast to LCG, the values increased by 2.5% over the same period.
Source: Clarin
