Friday, January 27, 2023 | 6:58 p.m.
The Secretary of Commerce, Matías Tomobolini, highlighted this Friday that the Fair Prices program is advancing to add some 124 companies in a few days, which will reach 482 participants, within the framework of the dialogue that the ministry carried out to extend the validity of this price scheme for six more months, until July.
“We are on our way to 482 companies in a few days,” said the Secretary of Commerce in reference to the negotiations begun with the companies to give continuity to the voluntary agreement Fair Prices, after the Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, confirmed that the program will run until the end of July.
The secretary explained that compliance with the program “in terms of stock is around 70%, signaling 77%, and in fixed prices 98%” and said that “the biggest challenge of this is that the product is on the gondola, that the supply is fulfilled”.
“We were able to establish agreements so that purchases are intelligent and where businessmen, workers and the State can find an efficient use of the resources that Argentina produces,” he said.
When asked about the complaint filed by Elisa Carrió for the collaboration in price control by the Truckers union, he said that “all sectors participate” in this program and that “everyone is needed to collaborate with the price programs , also to the opposition, we are focused on incorporating more sectors to share information”.
Regarding inflation, he said, “the solutions do not imply shocks, nor gradualism, but realism and it has to do with the road map proposed by Minister Massa.”
In this sense, he expressed that among the solutions, those that “are going to cause shocks that leave out the vast majority of society” cannot be debated and that the solution “is not magical.”
For the solution to the price increases, he specified that what is necessary is “to order priorities based on what Argentina can produce in terms of what it collects to be able to spend.”
“Ordering that was not easy and it was possible to reach the agreed goal with the fund of 2.44% fiscal deficit and that effort is made by all Argentines,” he added.
In inspections, 7,770 inspections have been carried out since Tombolini’s management, 4,488 in supermarkets and wholesalers, from Now 12 2,051 inspections and more than 1,813 in fixed points of Fair Prices.
Finally, and regarding the sanctions applied by the secretary, Tombolini said that “fines were made for 440 million pesos that were pending treatment, and we deployed controls 15 days ago in a self-service chain, in 300 stores throughout the country, and 79 minutes were drawn up and 3 stores were closed.
Fair Prices is a voluntary price agreement that was launched by the Government on November 11 at the Kirchner Cultural Center.
The initiative froze the prices of nearly 2,000 products that are part of the basic basket in the food, beverage, dairy, personal hygiene and cleaning items, with the participation of more than 100 companies that represent 86% of mass consumption in Argentina.
In parallel, the adhering firms pledged not to increase the final price of the rest of the more than 30,000 products they offer on the market by more than 4% per month.
In return, the Government guaranteed participating companies greater fluidity in access to foreign currency at the official exchange rate for the importation of inputs necessary for production.
The original agreement was joined at the end of November by the oil companies, which agreed that the fuels participate in the Fair Prices program with monthly increases of up to 4% in December, January and February, and 3.8% in March of this year.
