Argentina’s inflation reaches 102.5 percent in the 12 months to February, surpassing the symbolic triple-digit mark and reaching a new 32-year high.
Latin America’s third-largest economy witnessed an inflation rise of 6.6 percent in February and 13.1 percent since the beginning of the year, the Indec national statistics institute said. Argentina has one of the highest inflation rates in the world.
In 2022, it went 94.8 percent, the country’s highest annual figure since 1991, when it exceeded 171 percent. The two last years had noticed hyperinflation at more than 2,000 percent. The state has set a 2023 inflation target of 60 percent. Argentina has been a bother with an economic crisis for years, reporting double-digit inflation in each of the last 12 years.
In December, the center-left government of President Alberto Fernandez agreed with foodstuffs and personal hygiene companies to freeze the prices of around 2,000 products until March and capping increases on another 30,000 products to four percent a month.
Some 36.5 percent of Argentina’s 47 million population lives in poverty, including 2.6 million in severe poverty, according to official figures from mid-2022. Argentina’s economy expanded by 5.2 percent in 2022, compared to 10.3 percent the last year, which ended three years of recession.
On Monday, the IMF said it had reached an agreement with the government in Buenos Aires on the fourth review of an assistance package for the South American country, paving the way for the disbursement of some $5.3 billion.
The new tranche of the budget would carry the funds allocated to Argentina since the signing of the assistance program in March 2022 to $28.8 billion.
Argentina’s development for 2023 is expected to slow to just two percent, according to the World Bank. If that does happen, it would be the first time in 15 years that Argentina had encountered three successive years of growth.
