In the middle of last year, three weeks before PASO, all the efforts of the economic space were put into action. contain inflation, which had reached 6.5% in July and was on its way to 8% in August.
In those days of the electoral campaign, Miguel Pesce, then president of the Central Bank, had not had an idea remove the pricing issue from the immediate agenda. For this reason it decided to postpone the publication of the survey of market expectations (REM) which the monetary entity published on the first Friday of each month. Although it was supposed to be announced before the August 13th election, it was scheduled for the 15th.
The REM brings together the opinions of around 40 consultants and economists on inflation, dollar, rates and activity level which is expected in the next few months.
Pesce not only changed the dates of that month, but starting from August he decided to publish REM The same day in which the consumer price index was released. With that strategy directly partially disabled the forecast utility, who had been rather pessimistic.
One of the arguments that Pesce used in that period was that the consultants were making mistakes with inflation, with higher calculations than those then reported by INDEC.
Now, Santiago Bausili, president of the monetary entity, has decided to return to the ancient tradition of publishing REM on the first week of the month: The next one will be February 7, a week before the INDEC publishes January inflation on January 14, estimated at around 20%.
Last month’s price increase was conditioned by a strong statistical drag, around 9% after 25.5% in December. But according to the consultancy firm C&T it shows a slowdown started the last week of December and continued throughout January.
The increase in retail prices in January was driven by leisure, a seasonally determining factor in all months of January, but which this year had a greater increase, equal to 36.8%, due to the impact of adjustment of the official exchange rate and general price increase. The adjustments to public transport in the GBA, by more than 40%, and the increase in fuel prices also had an impact.
In the slowdown of the CPI in January, the performance of the Food and beverages. These products come from an escalation that made them reach 31% in the last two weeks of December and in January they increased by 16.3%.
Source: Clarin
