“Increasingly more complicated”, the Argentine food sector resigns itself to inflation

The usual coming and going of carts loaded with boxes of fruits and vegetables each morning in the Buenos Aires Central Market seems to happen to him like a great earthquake announced the unbridled increase in inflation in Argentinawhere the price of food and non-alcoholic beverages increased by 14.3% in September.

“This is going to increase and become more and more complicated.“, predicts Fabián, a regular agricultural wholesaler at the Tapiales fruit market, in the southwest of the Buenos Aires suburbs.

The data of the food inflation has a direct impact on the measurement of poverty and indigence in Argentina.

In the first half of the year, poverty in the urban population of Argentina It stood at 40.1%, while indigence stood at 9.3%.

According to the latest price index report published by the National Institute of Statistics (Indec)the increase in the food division was the one that had the greatest impact in all regions of Argentina in the ninth month of the year, although it was 1.3 percentage points below the increase experienced in August.

The variation in food prices in this segment was only surpassed at the state level by the divisions of ‘Clothing and footwear’ (15.7%) and ‘Recreation and culture’ (15.1%).

The basic basket is triggered

Some products of the basic basket such as rice experienced notably high increases, with per kilo of this product being 26.4% above its value in August.

“At the moment the situation is very complicated. The whole economy is very bad. You are going to buy a package of sugar at a store and you pay twice as much”says Fabián.

Precisely, sugar experienced one of the most notable increases in the entire basket calculated by the Indec. Each kilo of the sweetener is 14.4% more expensive than a month ago in the country, 8.7 points more than in the month of August.

Others also followed with increases basic products such as salt (21.2%), eggs (18.7%), potatoes (14.2%) or bread (13.7%).

But it was in fruits and vegetables – mainly those for export – where the explosion in prices over the past month was most noticeable.

“The thing is that now all (those prices) are in dollars“, says Fabián when asked by EFE about the high figures of the fruits and vegetablesthe raw material with which he trades at his position.

“Everything that is imported is more expensive, for example the banana that comes from Ecuador“, he confirms, getting quite close to the data of the Indecwhich highlight an impressive 46.2% increase in the weight of each kilo of bananas.

On the opposite side of the scale are the cuts of meat indexed by the organization.

Roast, minced meat, shoulder, rump and buttock continued to rise in September (around 15%), but they did so at a much lower rate than in August (when they rose around 30% in each case).

an optimistic voice

Faced with Fabián’s bad omens, others like Alejandro prefer to be positive.

“There are fewer sales because people can’t buy, but we have faith that we will get ahead as always”, he points out and assures that food is the last product whose purchase consumers reduce.

However, even an optimist like Alejandro recognizes that greengrocers buy fewer and fewer quantities of food for sale, because customers respond increasingly worse to the sector’s rising prices.

Less than ten days before the first round of elections elections in Argentinathe new inflation figures seem to feel like an earthquake announced in the Buenos Aires market, even after recording its worst two-month period – including August and September – since the end of the southern summer of 1991.

Through its corridors, crowded with loading and unloading porters in the early hours of the morning, the feared percentage is just one more figure in the midst of the daily hustle and bustle.

With information from EFE