MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine consumers’ inflation expectations for next twelve months above 30%

Low income groups are even more pessimistic about soaring prices

Argentines expect an inflation of 30% for the next twelve months despite a slight deceleration in prices which consumers admit in some periods of the current year according to the findings from the Di Tella University.

The 30% expectation is at national level and has been so for the last eleven months running to September. Expectations have risen 1.4 percentage points over the previous month and stand at 32.8%, the Inflation Expectations Survey, (EI) done by the Finance Research Centre, (CIF) from the Torcuato Di Tella University Business School.

“Expectations have remained stable, virtually unchanged since March 2012, with a slight drop last October but it was back to 30% in November, which marks a historic record for the month to month survey”, said Guido Sandleris, head of the CIF.

Sanleris explained that inflation expectations for the next twelve months have increased in the capital Buenos Aires City and the interior of the country but remain stable in metropolitan Buenos Aires.

“There is also a strong increase in inflation expectations among the low income groups for the next twelve months who are looking to inflation in the range of 36.2%, up 4.5 percentage points from August”.

However for high income groups expected inflation ranges 31.4% almost unchanged over August.

The index is worked out on the basis of a monthly survey of 1,200 cases covering the whole of Argentina done by pollster Poliarquía for the Di Tella university CIF.

In related news Argentina’s congressional Freedom of Expression committee presented their “Congress GDP index” for the second quarter of the year which as happens with the “Congress inflation index” reported differences with those from the official government stats office, Indec.

In effect the Congressional GDP index shows that the Argentine economy in the second quarter expanded at an annualize 5.4%, which is 1.7 percentage points less that the official Indec estimate.

The GDP index is an average of private economic affairs consulting companies which have been intimidated (with fines and court reporting) not to make public their findings.

Based on the second quarter growth estimate of 5.4%, the year should end with an accumulated expansion of 3% for the twelve months of 2013.

However the GDP estimates from Congress and Indec do not seem to have the distance which is evident with the inflation indexes: since the Congressional inflation index was started it has been double or more the official rate released by Indec.