Sales with Ahora 12 exceeded one billion pesos in 2022

Photo: Lara Sartor.

The sales made through the different modalities of the Ahora 12 program amounted to one trillion 676,037.61 million pesos in 2022, and had an increase at constant values of 4% compared to the 2021 levelwith 21 provinces registering improvements above inflation.

According to the survey of the consultancy Politikon Chaco based on data from the Ministry of Commerce, Only in the City of Buenos Aires, Chaco and Río Negro did sales show increases below inflationwith annual falls of 4.7%, 2.6% and 2.1%, respectively, while at the other extreme the main percentage increases occurred in Formosa (28.2%), Tucumán (26.2%) and La Rioja (24.4%).

In absolute values, CABA was the district that led the sales amounts, with $542,548.2 million, followed by the homonymous province with $521,829.1 million and between the two jurisdictions, 63.5% of all sales in the country were concentrated through Ahora 12, lower than the 65.6% they had in 2021.

At the other end, the five provinces with the lowest participation in the national total (Santa Cruz, La Pampa, Formosa, Catamarca and La Rioja) concentrate only 1.5% of the total.

Items that led sales

They were Clothing and Home Appliances, distributed equally among the 24 districts: in Buenos Aires, Chubut, Córdoba, La Pampa, Mendoza, Neuquén, Río Negro, Salta, San Juan, Santa Cruz, Tierra del Fuego and Tucumán, operations were led by the first sector, while household appliances were the first option in CABA , Catamarca, Chaco, Corrientes, Entre Ríos, Formosa, Jujuy, La Rioja, Misiones, San Luis, Santa Fe and Santiago del Estero.

The consultancy directed by Alejandro Pegoraro observed that “there are also some districts with other items as protagonists”with the participation in second or third place of construction materials or footwear and leather goods.

“In the case of Household Appliances, the peak share of total sales was seen in Chaco, where 52.3% of total billing was concentrated,” he highlighted, in addition to pointing out that in Clothing “the highest volume over the total sales are observed in Buenos Aires with 36.2%”, while in Construction Materials “La Rioja is the province where the highest sales volume was concentrated (17.5%)”.

Politikon noted that “in general, the performance of the provinces is growing” also in relation to the years prior to 2021.

In this sense, he indicated that “in relation to 2019, twenty-three jurisdictions present increases and only one has falls, which is Formosa (-16%), a province that led the ranking of increases in 2022 but was not enough to surpass that of 2019 ” .

“For its part, Tierra del Fuego is the province that exhibits the greatest real increase in 2022 compared to 2019 (114.5%),” he added, while if the data is compared against 2020, it is observed that there is also only one province with real decreases (La Pampa with -3.1%) and Tierra del Fuego is once again at the top of growth (+66%).

For the consultant, “both the growth and the gaps between the provinces are explained, in part, by the characteristics and evolution of the program,” because “the same items are not part of the program in 2022 compared to previous years , and the advancement of access to the banking system also makes it possible to expand the base population that accesses the program”.