Inflation jumped again for the fourth consecutive month. Last March, the consumer price index stood at 7.7%, its highest level since April 2002, as reported by the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (Indec). In addition, the price level accumulates an increase of 104.3% year-on-year.
Thus, the first quarter of the year closed with inflation of 21.7% accumulated, leaving a raised floor for the rest of the year.
For its part, the item that registered a more pronounced rise was Education, with an increase of 29.1%, while the category with the highest weight in the index, Food and beverages, posted a rise of 9.3% in the past month.
Within the disaggregated by regions, Whose was the one with the highest average with 7.9% in that month, followed by the Pampas and Conurbano regions, where prices rose an average of 7.8%. Below the average, in Patagonia inflation was 7%, while there was disparity in the North, the Northwest 7.3%; and the Northeast 6.2%.
The data exceeded that expected by the consensus of consultancies consulted in the last Survey of Market Expectations (REM) carried out by the Central Bank, where inflation was projected for the past month of 7%.
For the month of April, the REM predicts that the data could drop to 6.3% to remain around that level until September. According to the consensus projection of analysts consulted by the monetary authority, accumulated inflation for 2023 will be 110%, which implies a jump of 10 points compared to the estimate of just the previous month.
