Within the framework of an unbeatable financial climate stimulated by the good results of money laundering, inflation went from becoming the main success of the economic management of Javier Milei and his Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, to the eternal thorn in the side. what it was like for previous governments.
Along with the data on the decline of the dollar and the country risk that yesterday hit a minimum since the Government took office, the INDEC will release today an inflation figure that would meet the condition of being the lowest not only of this year but for the last two years and nine months. The thing is, to find a record below 3.8% or 3.9%, you have to go back to November 2021, when it was 2.5% to jump 1.3 points the following month and no longer go below 3%. but just keep going up.
However, the economic team admits that, even starting with 3the data could be closer to the hard floor of 4 percent. That is, above the 3.5% that was initially expected. The truth is that reaching that record, which seemed discounted at the beginning of last month when the reduction of the PAIS tax was announced, became a tougher battle than expected. The inflation data for the City of Buenos Aires, which stood at 4% for August, reflected this.
In Greater Buenos Aires, where, for example, it is strong the impact of the transport increase -in September the train ticket increased by 40%- and the impact of the fare adjustment is also felt, around 4% last month, the inflation index would not be too far from the Buenos Aires figure, which raised some alerts in the economic team. In fact, adjusting the same price variations from the CABA statistics to the national measurement – with different weighting of each item -, the INDEC CPI would also show 4% for last month. However, as the economist insists on clarifying Gabriel Caamanowho usually prepares this projection, the prices captured (ergo the variations) are different in the different districts of the country, so this exercise is only an approximation. Hence the official expectation regarding a smoother price movement in the rest of the country, which would help to average out the pressure in the metropolitan region.
One of the few private measurements carried out in the entire country encourages these presumptions. According to the survey by the Institute of Mass Consumption Studies (Indecom), the CPI was located below by 3.6% last month based on data obtained from scanned merchandise information (Check Scan) of a total of 33,239 tickets in 1985 points of sale throughout the country, between September 1 and 30.
Based on this survey, the organization anticipated that general inflation fell 0.6 percentage points compared to the latest INDEC data (4.2% for August),”inflation resumed the deceleration process after four months of stagnation, motivated due to the rollback of the PAIS tax rate,” it was stated in the INDECOM report.
According to this indicator, one of the items with the greatest increase was transportation, with an increase of 4% as a result of the increases in the prices of fuels and lubricants for vehicles for household use, along with the drag left by the ticket update. of urban bus from the previous month. Meanwhile, the category “housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels increased 3.9% while health also recorded an increase above the general level, of 4.8% due to the increase in prepaid bills, according to the study.
This measurement is in line with the results of other market statistics. For Analytica, for example, inflation last month showed 3.8% while for EcoGo, the data was 3.4% for last month while for C&T, which measures in GBA, the advance in prices was 3.5% in the general average.