Climb up on bread, flour and noodles: they ensure that wheat is not to blame

From the Executive they continue to insist on the possibility of increasing wheat restrictions. On this occasion, government spokeswoman Gabriela Cerruti asked the opposition to “discuss the issue” by saying that “they are a suitable tool”.

“The government believes that Retentions are a suitable tool at this time to separate national prices from international ones and called on the opposition to review its position and sit down to discuss the issue, as it is one of the possibilities we should consider, ”the official said, who joined the request of president Alberto Fernandez since last week.

In the face of the Government’s public insistence to raise the tax, from the Buenos Aires Cereal Exchange they showed that Wheat -derived foods have risen more than the international price.

In this sense, the work performed by Jimena Vicentin Masaro and Agustin Tejeda Rodriguez analyzed the monthly price variations from 2017 upwards of bread, wheat flour and noodles based on the economic model of delivery of variations in international prices, the exchange rate and internal factors.

In the case of bread, on average for the whole season, only 9.8% of the variations in bread prices come from variations in international prices, and 11% exchange rate variations. The remaining variations in the price of the final product come from other local factors.

“For this reason, a policy of intervention in the price of the main commodity, in this case, wheat, has a little significant effect on consumer prices and demand, while this has a negative impact on producers and supply, as discussed below, ”they conclude.

Flour, on the other hand, is the final product where price variations are influenced more than changes in international prices, which may be due to two reasons. On the one hand, its intrinsic composition, of which wheat is the most important input, represents a higher percentage of costs. But on the other hand, the fact that it is a product already It is usually subject to intervention at the final price.

“During the review period, more than 40% of the retail prices reviewed were part of the Care Prices program, except between 2018 and 2020, whose percentage dropped to less than 10%,” the show of the document,

Finally, in the case of dry noodles, changes in international wheat prices they barely explain the 13% average variation in their final price.

Going to the present, from the Buenos Aires Cereal Exchange they indicated that ethe international price of wheat reached its highest peak in the month of March, driven by the war between Russia and Ukraine, two of the world’s leading exporters. Argentina’s FOB price rose 45%, standing at US $ 461 per tonne as a result of this extraordinary increase in international prices.

But the prices of products They should only raise 8.45 pesos per kilo on bread; 9.7 pesos per kilo for flour and 7.05 pesos per kilo for noodles, taking into account both the international increase in wheat prices and the fluctuations in the exchange rate during that period. But the increases, according to INDEC, were more than demonstrated by the methodology implemented by the referents. Bread rose 38.46 pesos per kilo, flour, 10.87 pesos per kilo and 14.62 pesos per kilo for noodles.

“This suggests that the price variations of these products are mainly affected by other factors because, even in periods where international prices are registering a significant increase, local prices rises more than proportionally, reaching more than four times the increase in the case of bread, and more than double in the case of noodles ”, the work concluded.