The national government renewed the Care Prices program and the fruit and vegetable basket until October, with a quarterly average increase guideline of 9.3%, which will be 3.3% in July; 3.2% in August and 2.5% in September, it was officially announced.
In this new stage, which comes into force dStarting this Friday and will be valid until October 7the program covers 949 representative products of the average consumption basket in various items and categories.
Products from the warehouse, cleaning, perfumery, personal care and hygiene, baby items, fresh products (cold cuts, fresh pasta, empanada and cake tops), frozen foods and beverages are part of Care Prices.
In addition to Care Prices, the national government also updated the fruit and vegetable basket: The selected products and the agreed prices for this month until August 7 are (per kilo): potato ($63), onion ($105), tomato ($210), lettuce ($170), and apple ($190).
The fruit and vegetable basket at reference values will be available in supermarkets in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (AMBA), among which stand out Day, Walmart, Changomas, Jumbo, See, Disco, Coto, Carrefour and Makro.
Internal Trade sources specified that the agreement was supervised by Martín Pollera, the official appointed by the Minister of Economy, Silvina Batakis, to assume the leadership of the portfolio, replacing Guillermo Hang.
They also pointed out that they continue to work to agree with the dairy companies a basket with the most representative and consumed products of that category, while the meetings with the refrigerators continue for the renewal of Cortes Care, which will allow increasing the number of products included in the program.
The number of products included in the new program is less than that announced in the renewal carried out at the beginning of last April, when 1,321 items were advertised.
In this edition, initially there will be 949 products, to which they plan to add dairy products that are still in the negotiation stage.
With this renewal, the aim is to bridge the gap between the agreed and non-agreed products so that the program achieves its objective of being a price reference so that consumers make the best possible choice when they make purchases, granting greater predictability to the family spending and at the same time guarantee supply.
Prices Care will be available every day of the week in retail supermarket chains throughout the country such as Jumbo, Vea, Disco, Changomás, Coto, Carrefour, Día, Josimar, La Anónima, Libertad, Cooperativa Obrera, Super Santiago, Himisa Supermarket, Beltran, Blü, Borbotti, El Solar, El Zorzón, Único, El Abastecedor and Alfa.
On Wednesday, Minister Batakis confirmed the continuity of the Care Prices program.
“We are going to seek an agreement with the price makers, but the fundamental thing is to find a solution. There is a situation of uncertainty and we are working with a basket of goods and services that we are going to announce,” he said in a report on the Todo Noticias channel.
The head of the Palacio de Hacienda expressed that “inflation in Argentina has many causes, this is widely shared by many economists in Argentina” and recognized that “people have found in the dollar the preservation of their savings.”
The negotiations for the renewal of the Care Prices program were initiated by Guillermo Hang, the official appointed by former Minister Martín Guzmán a month ago as head of Domestic Trade.
On Wednesday, sources from the Internal Trade portfolio confirmed Hang’s departure from the position and Pollera’s appointment as the new head of the area.
