BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Argentina announced a
two-month price freeze on supermarket products Monday in an effort to break
spiraling inflation.
The price freeze applies to every product in all of
the nation's largest supermarkets — a group including Walmart, Carrefour, Coto,
Jumbo, Disco and other large chains. The companies' trade group, representing
70 percent of the Argentine market, reached the accord with Commerce Secretary
Guillermo Moreno, the government's news agency Telam reported.
The commerce ministry wants consumers to keep
receipts and complain to a hotline about any price hikes they see before April
1.
Polls show Argentines worry most about inflation,
which private economists estimate could reach 30 percent this year. The
government says it's trying to hold the next union wage hikes to 20 percent, a
figure that suggests how little anyone believes the official index that pegs
annual inflation at just 10 percent.
The government announced the price freeze on the
first business day after the International Monetary Fund formally censured
Argentina for putting out inaccurate economic data. The IMF has given Argentina
until September to bring its statistics up to international standards, or face
expulsion from the world body in November.
President Cristina Fernandez and her economy
minister, Hernan Lorenzino, responded over the weekend with a flurry of attacks
on the IMF, saying the agency's data-gathering efforts had lost credibility in
the lead-up to Argentina's historic 2001 debt default. They said IMF advice is
leading
Europeans astray by favoring big banks over measures that can grow
economies out of crisis.
However, Lorenzino also said that the government
will begin using a new inflation index starting in fourth-quarter 2013 — just
in time for the IMF's decision. Copyright
2013 The Associated Press.
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