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发帖数: 29846 | 1 Argentina freezes prices to break inflation spiral
Posted: Feb 04, 2013 11:51 AM Updated: Feb 04, 2013 11:51 AM
ALMUDENA CALATRAVA, Associated Press
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Argentina announced a two-month price freeze
on supermarket products Monday in an effort to break spiraling inflation.
The price freeze applies to every product in all of the nation's largest
supermarkets — a group including Walmart, Carrefour, Coto, Jumbo, Disco and
other large chains. The companies' trade group, representing 70 percent of
the Argentine market, reached the accord with Commerce Secretary Guillermo
Moreno, the government's news agency Telam reported.
The commerce ministry wants consumers to keep receipts and complain to a
hotline about any price hikes they see before April 1.
Polls show Argentines worry most about inflation, which private economists
estimate could reach 30 percent this year. The government says it's trying
to hold the next union wage hikes to 20 percent, a figure that suggests how
little anyone believes the official index that pegs annual inflation at just
10 percent.
The government announced the price freeze on the first business day after
the International Monetary Fund formally censured Argentina for putting out
inaccurate economic data. The IMF has given Argentina until September to
bring its statistics up to international standards, or face expulsion from
the world body in November.
President Cristina Fernandez and her economy minister, Hernan Lorenzino,
responded over the weekend with a flurry of attacks on the IMF, saying the
agency's data-gathering efforts had lost credibility in the lead-up to
Argentina's historic 2001 debt default. They said IMF advice is leading
Europeans astray by favoring big banks over measures that can grow economies
out of crisis.
However, Lorenzino also said that the government will begin using a new
inflation index starting in fourth-quarter 2013 — just in time for the IMF'
s decision. |
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