Private firms report June inflation at 3.5 to 4.1%

June inflation in Argentina totalled between 3.5 and 4.1 percent, private consultancy firms have reported.

Consumers in Argentina have tightened their belts since the beginning of the year, as a soaring US dollar and rising fuel and utility costs take hold of prices.

If official INDEC statistics bureau data backs up these private estimates, the Mauricio Macri administration’s (since-abandoned) 2018 inflation target of 15 percent was already surpassed in the first six months of the year.

The government had initially set a target of eight to 12 percent but revised the figure to 15 percent in December last year, prompting controversy and underscoring rifts in the President’s economic team. Amid the self-described economic “turbulence” in the second quarter of the year, the government all together abandoned its inflation target.

The Argentine peso has lost 70 percent of its value in the last 12 months.

Economy Minister Nicolás Dujovne says the government now believes annual inflation will total around 27 percent — in other words 2.2 percent more than the 2017 final rate of inflation.

PRIVATE ESTIMATES

Consultancy firm Elypsis put June inflation at 3.8 percent nationwide.

For its part, the Germán Abdala Foundation set its Price Measurement Index (IRP) at four percent for June, for a 29.6 percent annual inflation estimate. “In this sense, we are starting to see the impact of the run on the currency on prices”, the organisation said in a statement.

Go reported a 3.7 percent rate of inflation for June in its RPM index, for a total 28.8 percent annually.

Fausto Spotorno reported 3.9 percent inflation in June, for a 28.4 percent total annual rate of inflation, saying in a statement: “The impact of the devaluation [of the Argentine peso] has arrived”.

The Ferrares firm put inflation at 15.5 percent in the first half of the year, while C&T suggested inflation had totalled 30 percent in the 12 months to June. Lorenzo Sigaut Gravina at Ecolatina forecasts inflation of 3.5 percent for June and 30 percent for 2018.

-TIMES/PERFIL