A major labour dispute is turning into an ugly conflict with the main Argentine dissident labour union challenging the government of President Cristina Fernandez and her latest policy of freezing supermarket prices for two months in a bold attempt to contain inflation.
Bank of England has chosen not to inject any more money into the economy, leaving its quantitative easing (QE) programme at £375bn. The Bank also left interest rates unchanged at 0.5%.
Argentina is the country with the world’s fourth highest inflation, behind Sudan, South Sudan and Byelorussia, according to a report from a leading Argentine bank from the City of Buenos Aires.
Uruguay’s Economy minister Fernando Lorenzo expressed concern about the deteriorating indicators from the Argentine economy which could have a negative impact on the country’s activity.
Argentina is rapidly becoming an expensive country for tourists and evidence of this is the declining number of tourists arriving in the country in the first months of the year while the number of Argentine travelling overseas is soaring, according to Mario Lielman, chair of the Buenos Aires Tourism and Travel Agencies Association.
The president of Argentina’s Central Bank (BCRA), Mercedes Marcó del Pont, stressed the importance of the recently approved bank’s charter reform and denied that printing currency leads to the creation of an inflationary state “since inflation is rooted in other causes”.
History has left Argentines with more than their share of economic trauma. Having twice suffered destructive bouts of hyperinflation in the late 1980s, they are sensitive to rising prices. When they spot inflation their instinct is to dump the peso and buy dollars.
Uruguay's inflation rate rose in January 0.74% from December as housing, hotel and restaurant prices jumped, the national statistics agency, INE, reported this week. The consumer price index rose 8.05% on the year at the end of January, INE said.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned Argentina about its “lack of progress” in addressing inflation data and called on the country to implement “specific measures” within the next six months to improve it.
Inflation in Venezuela during last year reached 27.6%, which is 0.7 percentage points more than in 2010, according to a preliminary report from Venezuela’s central bank. President Nelson Merentes said that the consumer prices index “was associated to the upwards pressure generated on wholesale prices by a greater dynamism from domestic aggregate demand”.