Fernández asks private sector to help ‘contain’ inflation in Argentina
President urges employers to “contain” price increases, in a effort to stabilise Argentina's runaway inflation rate, which reached 53.8% in 2019.
President Alberto Fernández has urged firms and employers to “contain” price increases in a bid to tamper inflation, which reached 53.8 percent in 2019.
“We need them to help contain prices responsibly. We need that they accompany us because we are going to be a better society the day we know that no Argentine is hungry,” Fernández declared on Wednesday during a Inter-American Council event on trade and production.
"We have helped production start to recover by curbing [the rise in] electricity and gas rates, fuel increases, opening up credit from Banco Nación and the Banco de la Provincia [de Buenos Aires]," he said.
"It is not possible that, with all that, prices keep rising. It has to stop because it is not logical," added the Peronist leader.
In January, the INDEC national statistics bureau's consumer price index (CPI) calmed to 2.3 percent, as compared to 3.7 percent in December. Nonetheless, the food industry registered the highest price increase at 4.7 percent.
Argentina is going through a economic crisis, after almost two years of recession, a severe depreciation of its currency and high inflation, as well as rising poverty and unemployment.
Among his first measures after taking office in December, Fernández froze utility rates and fuel prices for 180 days, and raised taxes and tightened exchange controls.
- TIMES/AFP