Our Higher Prices Vs. INDEC’s Lower Prices

Typically my posts are not very personal in nature. I’m making another exception this time to illustrate a point about inflation. On Monday I went to Aroma to have a sandwich, a cup of orange juice and free WiFi. I paid 11 pesos for a “Roll Carne Asado,” which is a tasty little burrito-like sandwich. Satisfied with the experience, I returned Tuesday for another round. This time, however, the same sandwich cost 15 pesos.

That’s a 36.4% increase in less than 24 hours. “What happened to the price of this roll?” I asked an Aroma employee. “The price went up,” she said. “I know,” I responded, “but why?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “It just did.”

It did, indeed.

We know that Nestor and Cristina have sent Argentine “technicians,” including the woman who oversees the government’s consumer price index, to the US to look at how the US government elaborates its own CPI. Let’s hope they come back convinced that lying about economic data is not in the country’s ‘s long-term interest. For those of you who missed it, INDEC ‘s most recent data indicated that prices of many goods actually declined last month. (See graph below)

Naturally, weather, tourism and other seasonal factors can – and often do – push prices up or down in a cyclical fashion. This is to be expected in any country. But I’d be curious to see if anyone other than Cristina, Nestor and a few of their cohorts really believe that the following items actually became cheaper last month compared with prices from a year ago.

According to INDEC, “tourist hotel” rates declined by around 20% while ice cream prices dropped about 7% compared with a year ago.