February inflation was 4.7% and accumulated 52.3% in the last twelve months

Inflation reached 4.7% in February and thus accumulated 52.3% in the last twelve months, according to Indec on Tuesday. The first two months of the year began this way with high price indexes, since in January the CPI had reached 3.9%, which is beginning to cast doubt on the feasibility of the official projection agreed by the Government and the IMF, which has a ceiling of 48% by 2022.

In this way, the price increase in the second month of the year was above what private consultants expected, which projected by 4 percent. Food once again played a significant role in February's inflation, as it increased by 7.5 percent. In this regard, the Government is analyzing measures such as an increase in withholding of some agricultural products in order to seek to “decouple” the domestic price from the shock of international food values caused by the war in Ukraine.

With the regulated price increases applied this month, the rise in food and the recent adjustment in fuel prices, economic analysts already anticipate that inflation in March could reach 5% and, in that case, it would be the highest monthly index since September 2019, when after the PASO it exceeded the 5% monthly level (2019 peak was 5.9%).

Other analysts, meanwhile, place the projections for the monthly index for March at 4.4% or with a 4.5% floor, close to the highest index in the last year. The peak of 2021 was in March of that year, with a monthly index of 4.8%.

This Tuesday at an event in Tortuguitas, President Alberto Fernández spoke that this Friday will begin a “war” against inflation. “I hope that this week we can begin to put the debt issue in order, and I promise that on Friday another war will begin, the war against inflation in Argentina; we will end the speculators and we will put things in order,” he said.

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