January 2022 started with a bleak outlook for consumers: a new pandemic peak added to the increase in products, which marked the agenda for the first month of the year, and the increase in prices of goods and services have hit households harder.
(Inflationary shock due to war threatens economies in Latin America).
This was revealed by the National Administrative Department of Statistics (dane) in his latest publication of the Social Pulse survey, in which the Consumer Confidence Indicator presented a significant setback, because in January 2022 fell 3.4 percentage pointscompared to December of last year and stood at 35.9 points.
This, according to the director of the Dane, Juan Daniel Oviedo, has to do with the pressures that inflation has had in recent months, and that deepened with the arrival of the new year. “Since October we have been talking about how the prospects of households, both in their own situation and in the country, have deteriorated.”, he assured.
According to the Dane, when questioning the families about how they perceive their situation compared to that of a year ago, the 48% of households believe that their situation is worse than 12 months ago, showing an increase in trend of 2.8 percentage points compared to the December 2021 result.
(Flours, oils and fertilizer, among which lower tariffs).
In addition, optimism for the future was reduced. Only 35.5% of households consider that their situation was better in a year compared to the current one, compared to December, there was a reduction of 0.9 points, with 36.4% of households considering that their situation in a year will be better.
In addition, 67% of families, that is, two out of every three heads of household, said that they consider that the country’s economic situation is worse than it was 12 months ago.
ECONOMIC SITUATION
The Social Pulse report for January also showed a deterioration in the living conditions of families for the start of 2022. When asking families about their possibilities to save, 10.4% of household heads said they cannot save, because in fact you have no income.
This, according to Oviedo, implied that “we fell back in terms of revenue generation compared to December 2021”, because at the end of last year only 8.8% of households claimed not to be receiving income.
(Uribe proposes bonus for workers affected by inflation).
However, it is worth clarifying that a year ago, in January 2021, 19.4% of household heads reported having no income, which does show a year-on-year recovery.
On the other hand, among families that do receive income, 74% of household heads say they have no chance to save and only 15.5% assured in January that they can. Another example of the impact that the increase in prices has had on the pockets of families has to do with their perceptions of the future. Well, 71.2% of household heads believe that prices will increase faster in the next 12 months and 15.2% of households believe that they will continue to increase at the same rate.
“Consumer expectations say that 86.4% consider that prices will continue to increase at the same rate as we saw in January 2022 or even faster,” explained the director of Dane.
The survey also revealed a reduction in the possibilities of acquiring basic necessities in families, since 64.1% said that they do not have greater possibilities of buying articles such as clothes, shoes, food, which, according to Oviedo, implies a reduction in purchasing capacity in two thirds of the country compared to January 2021.
“It is a correction in the face of the difficulty that prevailed in household heads in January 2021, but the manifestation of the inflationary outbreak that we are observing has an intensity that grows by 1.9 points compared to December 2021,” explained Oviedo.
BRIEFCASE
