Guadalajara, Jalisco. The Package against inflation and famine (Pacic), announced last Wednesday by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will bring very few benefits to consumers and the productive sector of Jalisco, businessmen and economic analysts in the state agreed.
According to Héctor Iván del Toro, a researcher from the Department of Economics at the University Center for Economic and Administrative Sciences (CUCEA) of the University of Guadalajara (UdeG), in the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area (ZMG) inflation is higher than the figure official of the Bank of Mexico and the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi).
The person in charge of the bimonthly study of the basic basket of the UdeG indicated that at the end of April 2022 the annual accumulated inflation, according to the official figure, amounted to 7.75%, while in the ZMG it is 7.86 percent.
“We almost reached 8% inflation in the first four months of 2022 (…) That means that workers can only access 92% of their salary due to inflation,” he stressed.
He explained that the 24 products that the Pacic indicates as priorities, in the ZMG would have a cost of 1,360.05 pesos per week for a family of four members.
Del Toro Ríos added that although the Pacic is trying to ensure corn, beans, rice and milk, and the granting of free fertilizers has been extended to nine states, in Jalisco many producers have changed the cultivation of these products for others. more profitable such as agave, berries, avocado and others that may be exportable.
Limitations
The coordinator of the doctorate in Economic Studies at the UdeG, Antonio Ruiz Porras, questioned the little impact that measures such as granting free fertilizers to producers will have in a period of drought in the country.
“The program, although it has good intentions, I see it as very limited due to weather conditions, international factors and because there is a certain exclusion of economic agents that are very important and it is a program that is not focused on promoting competitiveness despite the fact that, normally, what lowers prices in the short term is that there is economic competition”, stressed the academic.
Meanwhile, the president of the Mexican Council for Western Foreign Trade, Miguel Ángel Landeros, affirmed that the Pacic is “insufficient”, although he recognized the benefits of some measures such as the reinforcement of security for cargo transport and the deferral of the application of the consignment note for carriers.
“It is for companies that want to join, the big ones can afford it, but small and medium-sized companies will not be able to do it and we are talking about the vast majority.”
