December inflation was 25.5x% according to the consumer price index (CPI) reported on Thursday by the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INDEC), the first measurement released since Javier Milei took over as head of the national executive. December 10th.
The CPI had seen a 12.8% increase in November, a few points above the 8.3% shown by the October measurement, so it was close to September’s 12.7% and last August’s 12.4%.
Private estimates predicted that the price increase would be between 25% and 30%, which gave rise to celebrations from Javier Milei. “If it’s 30% is a big numberwe came for 45. It would mean that we managed to shoot down a third of them”, underlined the head of state in conversation with radio Mitre.
In the hours before the release of the data, Javier Milei said that if the figure is close to 25%, “it means that the success has been enormous”.
“If we are at that number we must call Caputo and congratulate him,” he said in a conversation with La Red radio a few hours before the first inflation data of the Milei era were released.
Meanwhile, in his conference on Thursday, Manuel Adorni argued that “any level of inflation is harmful”, since “inflation affects purchasing power and especially those who have less”.
“We understand that every point of inflation is the responsibility of the previous government due to delays in monetary policy. What we are not doing is sweeping the data under the carpet,” the national official said.
And he added: “Believing that the responsibility for the disaster in which we are immersed is that of a government in office for 30 days seems childish to me or, in this case, naive. It is clear that we were and still are at risk of leading to hyperinflation. ”.
As anticipated by the data released Thursday by Indec, the price index of the city of Buenos Aires – which is usually in line with the national indicator – had marked a record of 21.1% in December, but the rise in prices of food products was 30.4%.
With these data, in 2023, Buenos Aires inflation was 198.4%, with food inflation increasing by 243.8%, according to data from the Directorate of Statistics and Censuses of Buenos Aires.
Source: Clarin
