It seems the pace of Argentina’s runaway rate is getting to be too much for even the professionals tasked with measuring it.
Following the announcement that consumer prices rose 12.4 percent in August, the government said Friday it would begin reporting on hikes every week.
Rather than using the INDEC national statistics bureau, however, the Economy Ministry will release consumer price estimates via its Economy Policy Secretariat (SPE), which is headed by Gabriel Rubinstein, the deputy chief of the portfolio.
"We will be issuing a weekly inflation report every Friday," Rubinstein posted on the X social media network.
For the first week of September, the estimate showed price increases of 2.1percent, with an inter-weekly decrease of 0.4 percent.
The official had replied to a post by the Secretariat concluding that "weekly inflation was easing," after analysing the evolution of prices in recent weeks.
The weekly estimates, Rubinstein said, will be made "completely independently" of the INDEC national statistics bureau, which produces the official monthly indicator that serves as a reference point for the updating of contracts and adjusting of wages in Argentina, which "will continue with its usual publications.”
Ramiro Castiñera, director of the Econométrica consultancy firm, told the financial newspaper Ámbito Financiero that the decision is "inconsequential" because "it is not a measure of economic policy.”
August's inflation figure was the highest recorded since March 1991, before the era of convertibility, a plan put in place during Carlos Menem's presidency that equated the value of the peso with that of the US dollar, came into effect.
The last time the INDEC recorded a double-digit figure (10.4 percent) was in April 2002, in the midst of the aftermath of the 2001 economic crisis.
– TIMES/AFP/PERFIL
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