The data of 7.7% inflation that the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC) released at the end of the week was a cross to the jaw to the National Government. The Chief of Cabinet, Agustín Rossi, He was honest when he said that they expected better numbers for this date. However, the Minister of Labor Raquel “Kelly” Olmos, stated that even with this number, formal wages did not lose to the escalation of prices. According to the INDEC report, in the last 12 months inflation was 104.3%.
The bad news for the Alberto Fernández administration continues to appear and the answers seem increasingly scarce. This Friday the inflationary number for the third month of the year was known (20.3% accumulated in the first quarter) and there were few pro-government voices that echoed the result.
One of them was the Matias Tombolini, Secretary of Commerce and a confidant of Sergio Massa, who gave a short press conference where he blamed the “price makers” and said that as an urgent measure, controls once morest defaulters would be tightened. These inspections, however, seemed to have no weight in the above results.
With this scenario, the Chief of Staff opened up regarding the expectations of the ruling party regarding the fall in prices. “We thought that in the last quarter of last year we were achieving it. It was not so in the first and second months of the year, nor in the third, “he told Radio 10.
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He also tried to explain the higher inflation since 2022. “Nobody can be happy with this indicator of inflation. Then there are a number of technical explanations. We have inflation that has been traveling at a high rate and when that trip Seasonal issues are added to them, clearly it ends up generating a number of these characteristics, which all it does is question us,” he said.
According to Rossi, prices in the first two weeks of January had stabilized, but at the end of the month “the market took note of the negative effect that the drought was going to have on reserves and the attempted devaluation run began.”
“We are worried and busy“, said the Chief of Staff, third in the position since the Frente de Todos came to power in 2019. “The pain that inflation generates for society as a whole, especially in the popular sectors, we understand and it is very angry what happens in our government,” he added.
What “Kelly” Olmos Said About Inflation
The Minister of Labor analyzed the inflation data from another perspective: wages. In radio statements with AM750 He said that the salaries of formal workers, in the public and private sectors “They had no purchasing loss from December 31 to March 31.”
Like Rossi, he stressed that March is a month of higher inflation than others, but he also spoke of the legacy of Cambiemos. “This 7.7% inflation has to do with the conditions in which we received the government and now with the drought, which had a very strong impact on the income of foreign currency and those of the State,” he stressed.
On the other hand, he proposed that the deadlines to discuss parities be shortened and added that month by month the evolution of the formal salary follows. “Regarding the informal sector, the government’s response has been to increase the amount of the Alimentar Card by 35%,” he concluded.
GI / ED
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