It goes without saying that even the INDEC data, recovered from the discrediting of the latest Kirchnerism, belie the fantasy of the impressive economic recovery that the President and the official propaganda proclaim, restless.
It is useless in principle because in a permanent everything goes, Alberto Fernández has got into the habit of stating and stating similar things without worrying that reality confirms his claims, not even that they are the least bit credible.
This time, at the opening of the ordinary sessions of the Congress, overwhelmed the dependent clappers with numbers and records on economic growth of 2021 compared to 2020 and ended with the seemingly vigorous and enviable way Argentina emerged from the pandemic.
Official statistics of that period say GDP up 10.3% against a drop of 10%.
It doesn’t look all that bad when malaria strikes. But it’s another thing to go around showing that Argentina is facing one of the “fastest recoveries in the world” and, in the first test, crash head-on against statistics that can be found without too much effort, right here in the neighborhood.
The same comparison applied by Fernández showed, in Brazil, a positive 4.6% for 2021 against a negative 4.1% for 2020. Chile recorded no less than 11.7% against a decrease of 5 .6%, or a difference of 6 percentage points. And Peru, 13.5 against 11.1%.
Clarito: as far as we are concerned, nothing from another world.
A similar model was used in an announcement by the Presidency of the Nation which, for weeks, has beaten the piece of climb that economic activity had accumulated in the first nine months of 2022 to explode, again, the refrain of the pandemic effect overcome.
The point is, it was a small time bounce, short and almost imperceptible, which began to fade, precisely, in August. Then the economy turned around and the last four months of 2022 saw consecutive declines, according to INDEC data.
Within that package, the industry has planted seven reds in thirteen months and construction, five in the past six. Still in decline, the conglomerate formed by the wholesale and retail trade ended December with a record lower than that of December 2021.
One figure completes the picture and reinforces it: 41% of the gross domestic product is concentrated between the three activities.
They are all signs of a recessionary climate which, for some analysts, anticipates an already very complicated 2023 since fierce impact of drought and exchange rate tourniquet blows: expect a drop of 2.8%. For others it is an ironing that could be seen coming, inevitable, in an economy that creaks everywhere.
Amidst the hubbub of the numbers and the various interpretations, the 5.2% rebound that official statistics assigned to 2022 skated. It is that, according to private estimates, that 5.2 incorporated 5% or five points that come from the leap that the activity affected in the second half of 2021.
Net of those five points which in jargon are called statistical drag, for the positive case we would be talking about a real growth of just 0.2%. Other variants reduce the resistance and bring the final result to around 2%. Nor from another world.
Difficult to find in such a flurry of figures where Fernández comes up with another couple of slogans with a strong electoral smell. One, that the country “is substantially better than it was three years ago.” The next, that “we have laid the foundations on which to build the great country we dream of”.
In the same capacity as an official freethinker, he said it these days inflation “It’s a problem that has plagued Argentina for decades.” And, moreover, that “we are determined to lower it, but not at the cost of greater poverty or of affecting growth”.
titles again. Smoke if you want or the trick of kicking the ball out who, being so old and busy, pays less and less, almost zero.
Furthermore, the INDEC data hammer away at superinflation which is causing workers’ incomes to tremble relentlessly and, above all, those of those who are not unionized, lack basic social and employment coverage and live on the margins of the system.
This is notoriously the case with informal wage earners, with an income that since 2017 has lost 34.7% of its purchasing power according to the calculations of the economist Nadin Argañaraz. If the measure of deterioration is the cost of food, the percentage rises to 39.5% and remains at 39.2% in relation to health services and medicines.
This army of workers adds up to approx 9.2 million, between undeclared and self-employed workers, concentrates half of the country’s workforce and in its very size speaks of an economy with low productivity and low propensity to invest. Obviously, they coexist with the poverty.
A political detail, which at this point in the film is much more than a detail, says that in the suburbs of Buenos Aires there are 40.9% of so-called irregular workers and represent one of the highest records in the country. Exactly, in an area where Christianity plays its future.
Another detail, this time of a predictable kind, reveals that after the pandemic, informal work has recovered the fastest; It is understood, precarious work, low wages and no judicial problems.
There is, however, a yellow light that turns red here. It bears the stamp of a huge inequality of income and paints risks of social conflict, amidst the political tensions of election time.
Put in percentages of Argañaraz, white private workers have lost income equal to 17% of their wages since 2017 vs. 20.9% for state workers. It has already been said: at the bottom of the pyramid, informal wage earners have given up no less than 34.7% of their purchasing power.
Always ready, the presidential spokeswoman, Gabriela Cerruti, came out with a phrase from another world: “The vast majority of white (enrollment) workers have beaten inflation.” If it was true, it was for a moment: in January they are already forgiving again.
No one takes certain official definitions seriously anymoreespecially when the real economy continues to be bogged down in that cocktail which translated is called stagflation and shaken, moreover, by very earthly uncertainties that are projected even in the very short term.
It is worth pointing out, incidentally, that in the local version where it says stagnation it should be said 13% drop in real GDP per capita since 2011. And inflation is superinflation with a number: in February it will have exceeded 100% per annum.
In the words of Cristina Kirchner, this is called “We are in the oven”. And as if she weren’t part of the government, no less than a vice president, nor was she finally the one who put Alberto Fernández in the place he is, she rattled off about 100% inflation and swallowed an “I’m on the floor” when she spoke of real wages and employment.
No curiosity or crack, Cristina and Alberto usually play the same tune when they talk about problems that involve them: they shift attention and put them elsewhere, as if they could get rid of them in this way. Whether they like it or not, the reality is that they are in the same boat called Frente de Todos or, if you prefer, Kirchnerismo.
