There is no way to avoid allusions to service because service he’s on the street, all the time and at this moment improved. But in the midst of all this noise it seems less abrupt not to go straight to the point but to start from the sides, such as, for example, explaining what we are talking about when we talk about Basic food basket (CBA).
According to INDEC it is a thirty foods which allow you to cover “a minimum threshold of energy and protein needs” and which serve to set the homeless line “commonly known as extreme poverty”.
A direct relative, the next species is called Total Base Basket (CBT). In addition to essential foods and alcoholic beverages, it includes, among others, goods and services for health, clothing, transportation, education and housing. More generally, it is used to calculate poverty.
And, in the end, what is the powerful service that is on the street? Formally it is a number: 30%that some consultants had predicted for the December price index and that, before the INDEC announcement, Javier Milei had said that this would mean “an inflationary disaster, a horror”.
Even so, confident that he had the solution, the President declared: But “If we get to 30% it is a phenomenal result. They need to take Caputo for a walk“, the Minister of Economy. There was also an attempt to lower the price by 30% and who predicted it.
The official statistics office just reported that an indicator occurred in December ultra sensitive which could not be reduced to 30% and was therefore not a phenomenal result. Specifically, the 30.1% that increased the cost of the Basic Food Basket, That is, 30% and a little more in a single month and with an indicator like this: “a horror”, Milei would say.
The increase in the cost of the Total Basic Basket actually ended below 30%. But the downside is not enough to support Caputo: it is a considerable 27%, which exceeds the already noted 25.5% of the general price index, itself the highest since February 1991.
Visibly, December appears as an example of the impact, not always orderly, nor advisable, of the shock policies that Milei seems willing to apply across the board. This time you mentioned the strong devaluation with which you inaugurated your presidential mandate, which, measured by the increase in the price of the official dollar, amounted to at least 118%.
Without shock absorbers or any regulation, the adjustment seemed like a flash in a price structure fraught with constraints distortions and what’s more indexed. And it ended a year, including an electoral one, with inflation unleashed and skyrocketing.
The INDEC data shows, in escalation, that relating to a typical family The cost of the basic food basket reaches $240,679 and that of the total basic food basket reaches $495,798. All very narrow, no bourgeois aspirations.
It’s clear: the numbers overwhelm and the economic and social panorama that those numbers paint also overwhelms.
If we go to the basket that measures poverty, we have an increase of 258% in the last year of the Kirchnerist government of Alberto, Cristina and Massa. And since the starting point of the series was a, in this case, very moderate increase of 35% in 2020, the count shows that 2023 prices exceed 2020 prices by almost 8 times.
As for the cost of basic foods, the figures speak for 225% in 2023 and a jump of 186 percentage points versus 39% in 2020. Or, if you prefer, they say that last year’s prices are six times higher than 2020’s.
It is demonstrated, once again, the uselessness of controls of all colors, of the obstacles and pressures with which Kirchnerism tried to stop nothing itself. It is even possible to think, given the scale and development of things, that there were not controls for everyone and that those that existed were not the same. Benefits of running the reward and punishment machine and using the green button.
It is worth remembering that we are talking about the statistics used to measure poverty and destitution and, in fact, a preview of what the numbers for the second half of 2023 that the INDEC will release towards the end of March will look like.
Obviously poverty will be higher than the 40.1% and 11.8 million people that the indicator marked for the first half of last year. And it will compete for national primacy with 40.6% and 40.9% in 2021 and 2020, the highest votes since 2016 when the inconvenient statistics that the then Minister of Economy, Axel Kicillof, had sent to the drawer they were starting to recover memories.
Kicillof himself, already in the role of governor of Buenos Aires, will have difficulties with figures who are currently outside his zone of influence. Of course, if you accept what these figures reflect, that is, the reality and quality of your management.
By far the largest urban conglomerate in the country, Greater Buenos Aires records a poverty rate of 47% for the first half of 2023, affecting 6 million people. The updated version will approach, if not exceed, 50%, or half of the inhabitants of the entire province.
When Kicillof took office as governor, the poverty rate in the suburbs of Buenos Aires was 40.5%.
Nothing that is not known or perceived unequally, at the basis of such a picture coexist an inflation now out of control and a prolonged fall in real wages.
More numbers, now those that the tax expert Nadín Argañaraz presented in a recent report. Measured in purchasing power, they say that registered, i.e. empty, private employees have lost 17.8% compared to those in 2017; that among state employees pruning grows to 18.4% and that among informal, black and precarious workers it rises to an impressive 44.4%, that is, they have lost almost half of their income.
And an ending that does not seem out of place, responsible for INDEC or, rather, responsible for one of the effects of the libertarian devaluation.
Thanks to the strong adjustment behind it, the wholesale price index rose 54% in December, bringing the annual change to 432.6%. The cost of imported goods contributed 80.6% in December and increased 432.6% year-on-year.
In case it is necessary to add it, usually some or some increases in wholesale prices are passed on to end consumers. Especially if they are of such a size that they cannot be absorbed by trade.
Source: Clarin
