Hear
Just a few hours were enough for all positive data to disappear from a statement with statistics on SME retail sales in May. The Argentine Confederation of Medium Enterprises (CAME) originally published a report stating that these operations had had a month-on-month increase of 6.6%, but later removed that data.
This way, Only the information on the year-on-year measurement remained in the text, which shows that SME retail sales fell 7.3%as well as the one that shows that in the first five months of this year there is an accumulated decrease of 16.2%.
This modification was reported yesterday morning by the journalist of this newspaper Francisco Olivera, in the Luis Novaresio program that is broadcast on LN+. Since that broadcast, economist Antonio Aracre, former CEO of Syngenta, commented on his X account: “It seems that the positive economic data for the government of @JMilei generates ‘political noise’ and must be hidden… Luckily we have amazing JOURNALISTS like @FranOliveraOK and @luisnovaresio who tell you the same”.
When asked about the issue, CAME confirmed that they had indeed removed that figure. “A variable that is taken in that option is being verified, but first it gave that percentage [una suba de 6,6% en mayo respecto de abril]. We just want to make sure, that’s why we removed it from the publication, but these days we added it,” they commented.
The statement in question was published on Sunday on the CAME website, where it remains in first place to this day, with the following prominent title: “SME retail sales fell 7.3% in May.” Until yesterday, inside the text you could read that these sales had increased 6.6% in the inter-monthly measurement, but yesterday that was no longer possible: it was removed from the first paragraph.
Yes, you can read, already in the second paragraph, everything related to the measurements that gave negative numbers. “The lack of sales was the main complaint of the majority of the businesses surveyed. Almost 7 out of 10 businesses mentioned it as their main problem. Two other conflicting points were the high logistics costs and collection problems, which become more accentuated as the recession progresses,” he wrote.
Likewise, it was stated that “There was greater stability in public prices in May, but with other costs, such as energy, fuel, rents, salaries, on the rise, which complicated the businessman’s profitability.”. And it was added: “Some stated that they were financially suffocated.”
It was also highlighted that, in the analysis by category, five of the seven sectors evaluated had decreases compared to the same period of the previous year. “Only textiles and clothing and footwear escaped the general trend, although with low comparison bases,” it was indicated. And it was specified: “The greatest annual decline was detected in perfumery (-27.8%) and there were increases in textiles and clothing (+14.1%) and footwear (+0.4%).”.
The items analyzed are Food and drinks; bazaar, decoration, home textiles and furniture; footwear and leather goods; pharmacy; perfumery; hardware store; electrical construction materials, and textiles and clothing.
In addition to the falls in perfumery and textiles and clothing, The other items with falls compared to the same month last year were food and beverages (-9.4%); bazaar, decoration, home textiles and furniture (-10.6%); pharmacy (-20.3%), and hardware, electrical materials and construction materials (-7.8%).
All of this data came from CAME’s SME retail sales index, prepared on the basis of a monthly survey among 1,251 retail businesses in the country, carried out between June 3 and 7.
