It already governs Fair Prices, with almost 2,000 essential products

The program Fair Prices, which establishes the pricing of nearly 2,000 essential products for four months and a maximum increase of 4% for another 30,000 items during the same period agreed between the Ministry of Commerce and the companies and retailers, already in force throughout the country, sources from the Ministry of Commerce confirmed to Télam.

The price of the products will be fixed according to the average of the values ​​of October and, on that same basis, the 4% increase will run for the rest of the basket of products without fixing for the participating companies, which will allow threading a logic similar price variation for the entire sector and better address inflation expectations for the coming months.

The authorities trust that in the next 10 days the signage that will distinguish the products in the gondolas is finished being installed and progress will be made with the training of inspectors which, for this program, will be decentralized and in charge of the municipalities.

Currently, the application for mobile phones -Fair Prices, for phones with Android and IOs- is already available, which has already had more than 100,000 downloads in the last few days and allows you to see the list of products included, read barcodes and an option to report a price difference or shortages.

The objective of this measure, assured government sources, is to have a sustainable and predictable price policy over time, which allows both consumers and producers to order -that now they will be certain of the moment in which they will access foreign currency to add imported inputs- and that they also ensure the supply.

In this way, it is ensured that the abuses of companies that, given the uncertainty, accelerated the rise in prices since last July are avoided and that, now, will have a limit of 4% increases that will be monitored daily by the Ministry of Commerce, through through electronic systems and the assistance of mayors and inspectors who will be able to set and collect fines.

“We are very focused on continuing to deepen the road map of the minister (Sergio Massa), who shortly after taking office raised a panorama that had to do with achieving fiscal order, accumulation of reserves and since both things were achieved, we can move forward with what What does it have to do with pricing?“, said this morning the Secretary of Commerce, Matías Tombolini, in dialogue with Radio 10.

for now There are more than 113 companies included in the program and 1,823 products that will remain at constant prices in 2,500 outlets of 18 supermarket chains, 9 wholesale chains with 200 points of sale, and 25 local chains in the interior with more than 150 grocery stores. the whole country.

However, there are other companies that continue to join and it is expected that the number of products that participate in the program will increase, while the dialogue with supermarket chains in the interior deepens.

Although the agreement does not include local businesses or Chinese supermarkets, it does include the wholesalers from which these businesses source, so it would be possible to influence their prices, even if they do not participate in the program.

“It seeks to work on inflation expectations based on an analysis that we did in the Secretariat on the cost structure of the companies, giving an account of how it will be to find a vector that allows guaranteeing the supply while we order the prices, by time that we take care of the dollars,” Tombolini said this morning.

The program comes hand in hand with the new import administration mechanism (SIRA) that was implemented on October 17 and that, now, allows greater coordination between areas of the Government -Central Bank, Customs, AFIP and Secretary of Commerce- to the when executing pricing policies and managing the available dollars.

To ensure compliance and strengthen coordination, the Ministry of Commerce also works with agreements with the main industries that are part of the food production branch: glass, aluminum, cardboard, plastic and petrochemicals.

The search for these sectorized agreements is to reinforce the predictability around the 4% monthly guideline to, thus, generate a logic of similar increases between items that allows slowing down the inflationary inertia that for several months has been around 7%. monthly.

The program has the endorsement of the private sector and, among them, the president of the Food Products Industries Coordinator (Copal), Daniel Funes de Rioja, highlighted that Fair Prices are a “voluntary agreement” and that, although ” is not what is going to solve inflation”, it is “part of a process” in that sense.

“It is not a freeze but a voluntary agreement that implies not moving prices for four months“, affirmed Funes de Rioja to AM750 radio.

“This is not what inflation is going to solve; this is part of a process where there are macroeconomic issues, such as the efficient administration of fiscal spending and taking into account that you cannot spend more than what is generated or put more fiscal pressure on the formal sector of the economy,” added the business leader.