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Due to the reduction of the PAIS tax, the consulting firms believe that inflation broke through 4% monthly in September - Infobae
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Por la reducción del impuesto PAIS, las consultoras creen que la inflación perforó en septiembre el 4% mensual
El dato oficial se conocerá en dos semanas y sería así el IPC mensual más bajo desde enero de 2022. El Gobierno estima un 3,5% por el recorte de la alícuota de ese tributo
www.infobae.com
September 30, 2024
The official data will be known in two weeks and would thus be the lowest monthly CPI since January 2022. The Government estimates 3.5% due to the reduction in the tax rate.
By Mariano Boettner
Indec will announce September inflation in two weeks, but it would have broken through 4% in August, according to private and official estimates
According to estimates by private consulting firms, September inflation was less than 4 % per month, which would break through the floor that the pace of price increases had reached in the last four months. A significant part of this slowdown would have been explained by the reduction of the PAIS tax rate .
Inflation-measuring consultancies have released their final projections for September in the last few hours, with data from the last few days. Orlando J. Ferreres, on the one hand, estimated that his inflation measurement for September was 3.2% monthly, which would imply 201.4% on an annual basis.
Core inflation, another relevant data to know the speed of prices that are not regulated or seasonal, was 2.6% for OFJ. In the survey of this consulting firm, which covers only Greater Buenos Aires, it was recorded that Transport and communications, together with Clothing, led the increases for the month, with 5.5% and 5.1% respectively.
Housing (4%) and Education followed with 3.8 percent. “The core measurement, on the other hand, showed a variation of 2.6% and in annual terms it registered an increase of 188 percent. As for seasonal goods and services, the variation registered was 2.5% monthly, while Regulated goods rose 4.8% monthly,” concluded OJF.
Source: Orlando J. Ferreres
For its part, C&T Asesores Económicos also presented its final price measurement for September on Monday, with a scope that is also limited to the GBA. For this consultancy, it was 3.5% , which would represent the lowest monthly rate of price increase since November 2021. By only dropping below 4%, the September CPI would be the mildest since January 2022 .
Regarding the core, the monthly figure was 3.8% , below the 4.8% of August that C&T had measured, and which ended up being 4.3% in the Indec report. “In the second week of the month there was a significant moderation in the rate of increase in prices, linked especially to the goods component, which suggests a favorable impact of the reduction of the PAIS tax,” they explained.
Like Ferreres, in C&T they identified that “Transportation and communications was the component with the greatest increase, greatly influenced in the region by the residual effect of the increase in bus fares that had been implemented in mid-August and by the increase in train fares in the middle of the month.” They also detected increases above the average in the Health sector due to adjustments in medications and prepaid medicine.
On the other hand, Food and beverages rose 3.2% monthly, above August according to C&T. “Fruit and vegetables fell again, meat, dairy products and baked goods grew more slowly, but oils and fats and alcoholic beverages gained momentum,” they concluded.
Private studies that measure the weekly variation in prices updated their estimates with data from the fourth week of the month. Thus, LCG marked a weekly increase of 0.4% , which implies the same increase as the previous week. “The average monthly inflation and the inflation measured against the peaks of the last 4 weeks slowed by 0.2 and 1 point in each case, reaching 2.4% and 1.9% monthly, respectively,” they explained.
Meanwhile, Equilibra measured a weekly inflation of 0.6% and an average of 3.4% over the last four weeks . “September inflation is on track to break through 4% due to the slowdown in goods prices (2.5% 4-week moving average). For these reasons, our estimate of monthly inflation for September fell from 3.6% to 3.5%,” they said.
In their case, they also made a specific measurement for products with PAIS tax incidence, in order to estimate what the real impact of the rate reduction was. “After having lowered their prices during the month, this week electronics and durables led. Since the end of August, TVs accumulated increases of 3.2%, cameras 0.2% and computers 0.5%; cell phones and cars fell 0.1% and 0.9%,” they detailed.
Finally, Analytica said that during the fourth week of September, weekly inflation was 0.5% in food and beverages. The average for the last four weeks rose to 2.7% and for the general CPI, with these data in hand, they project a monthly index of 3.8 percent .
This last figure would be somewhat higher than the only official estimate made by the economic team through the Central Bank. The monetary authority had made it clear in a presentation made to investors by Vice President Vladimir Werning that the CPI for September could slow down to 3.5 percent , with a core rate of 3 percent .
Source: C&T Economic Advisors
The prospect of lower inflation has been back on the table for discussion in recent days, after President Javier Milei mentioned the need for inflation of the “macroeconomic program” to be equal to zero before being able to lift the exchange rate restrictions . The phrase was translated, strictly speaking, as a requirement that the CPI falls by about 1.5 percentage points compared to 4% in August.
The logic that the head of state tried to use indicated that there is an inflation “induced” by the monthly rate of depreciation of the official exchange rate (2% per month) plus 0.5% of global “imported” inflation. This 2.5% would be the “zero” degree of inflation to which prices should converge as a precondition for ending exchange controls.
"When that 1.5% has disappeared, we will find ourselves in a situation where the Lefi (Fiscal Letters that replaced the Leliq, operated by the Central Bank but whose interest is covered by the Treasury) have also disappeared and the monetary base - in the traditional format - coincides with the broad monetary base," Milei told investors on Wall Street a week ago.
And he concluded: “At that time, the money overhang will have disappeared and we will be able to open the currency controls without any problems because they will no longer have bullets to load the weapons that can destroy macroeconomic stability, because the excess of pesos within the economy will have been eliminated.”
