Latest Round Of Price Controls

[EricLovesBA]

Caught on the local news this morning an announcement about the latest round of price controls. Here's a little blurb about it in English:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-03/argentina-pledges-to-prevent-price-controls-leading-to-shortages.html

They're going to track everything with a computer so don't worry folks, there won't be any shortages this time!! Rest easy knowing they finally got this little inflation problem licked.

You can even track the prices here:

http://www.precioscuidados.com/

 

[ajoknoblauch]

Caught on the local news this morning an announcement about the latest round of price controls. Here's a little blurb about it in English:

http://www.bloomberg...-shortages.html

They're going to track everything with a computer so don't worry folks, there won't be any shortages this time!! Rest easy knowing they finally got this little inflation problem licked.

You can even track the prices here:

http://www.precioscuidados.com/

As we all know, the rules of economics do not apply to Argentina.

 

[AmigoArtistico]

Have you looked at the prices in the list?

You can already find many of the items (the same or similar quality) at significantly lower prices than the "frozen" prices.

And the government even admitted that prices of many items in the list have been raised to make sure there aren't shortages. (That's inflation fighting for you.) Not to mention that these prices are only good for 3 months.

Some "great deals":

• 1 liter Kin brand (Coca Cola) mineral water -- $9 (I bought a 6 liter bottle of Kin mineral water today for $14.15)
• Tuna, 170gr (La Campagnola) -- $20.50 (This was well under $20 recently, and you can get Día's house brand of lomitos de atun, which is excellent, for around $12.50)
• Pan Rallado Comun (Mama Cocina) 500gm -- $10.25 (I bought this exact item last week at Carrefour for $5.50 -- and it's not a very good product, by the way)
• A dozen white eggs -- $17

And these are far from the only examples.

This list is not only not anti-inflationary, but it will likely fuel inflation. Kicillof says that these prices will be used as benchmarks (trying to say that the prices in this list would keep the prices of other products down).

If these are the benchmark prices, we're in trouble. Are we now going to have a 6 liter bottle of water for $54 (+200%)? An immediate 30-60% increase in tuna and similar products? A 100% increase in wheat-based products? etc., etc., etc.?

If these prices are adopted as benchmark prices, this year will see the largest increase in food inflation, by far, in the past 10 years.

Keep the printing presses rolling.

 

[AmigoArtistico]

On the same theme (and with more examples), after posting the above message, I opened Clarin and found this headline:

La canasta oficial tiene subas de hasta 200% sobre la de Moreno

http://www.clarin.co...1060094045.html