The Secretary of Commerce called for this Tuesday afternoon business entities, trade unions, consumer defense, public organizations, universities and representatives of the provinces and the City of Buenos Aires, to a meeting to define a “work agenda” for the Observatory of Prices and Availability of Inputs, Goods and Services.
The meeting will take place at 7:00 p.m. at the headquarters of the Secretariat, official sources informed Télam.
There, the internal operating regulations of the entity created in September 2014 by Law 26,992 will also be approved, with the purpose of “monitoring, surveying, and systematizing the prices and availability of inputs, goods, and services that are produced, marketed, and provided in the territory of the Nation”.
The Law 26,992 created in 2014 the Observatory of Prices and Availability of Inputs, Goods and Services as a space presided over by the application authority (the Secretariat of Commerce) and made up of a representative of the Chief of Staff as Vice President and others from the Ministries of the Interior, Public Works, Science and Technology, and Economy; and three of the legally constituted and duly registered user and consumer associations.
Since 2016, the Observatory has not been active and the associations have been requesting its start-up of this tool created according to the law “with the purpose of making access to information on prices and availability of inputs, goods and services offered in the territory of the Nation transparent and tending towards greater protection of consumers and users”.
The President of the Association for the Defense of User and Consumer Rights (Adduc), Osvaldo Bassanotold Télam that “the Price Observatory examines products and services from the moment they leave production until they reach the consumer” and recalled that “in 2015 we discovered what the sale of fruit was like, which continues to exist today.”
For his part, Claudio Boada, president of the Union of Users and Consumerspointed out that “the objective of the observatory is the study of value chains over time, it is a study that does not have immediacy but it is a medium-term process.”
For the meeting on Tuesday afternoon, representatives of the Argentine (ABA), Public and Private (Abapra), and Argentine (Adeba) banking associations, and the Specialized Banking Association (ABE), the Industrial Union Argentina (UIA) and the Argentine Confederation of Medium Enterprises (CAME).
The General Confederation of Labor (CGT), the Argentine Chamber of Wholesale Distributors and Self-Services (Cadam), the Chamber of Supermarkets (CAS), the Argentine Federation of Supermarkets and Self-Services (FASA) and the Association of United Supermarkets (ASU) were also convened. ).
