Sergio Massa announced this Friday night a price agreement with supermarkets and wholesalers. The economy minister and candidate for president pointed out that there will be a 5% increase per month in mass consumption products for the next 90 days.
Despite the fact that the 22.5% devaluation that he implemented after the PASO strongly attacked worker wages already devalued by inflation, called on consumers to make a “shared effort”. But, as he explained, the measure will imply tax benefits for companies that agree to join the program: “The State resigns collection to prevent the increase in costs from being transferred to prices..
What Massa said about the agreement with supermarkets and wholesalers
“The increases will travel a path of 5% per month for the next 3 months. On the other hand, companies, supermarkets and wholesale chains absorb a part of the loss of profitability, ”he explained. “Part of the effort is made by the State because we have put two programs. One, of tax and tax benefitsand another, credit at a subsidized rate for SMEs that supply supermarkets in order to guarantee that path of 5% per month in all that are mass consumption products in Argentina”, said the minister.
According to the information provided by Massa, there will be 52,300 products affected by the measure, and on Tuesday the complete list of supermarket and wholesale companies that will adhere will be published. So far, they participate in the agreement Day, Carrefour, Preserve, Chango Más, Makro, Vital, Maxiconsumo, among others. Despite this, it should be noted that the price agreements that have been attempted have failed to resolve the inflation problem in Argentina, either through freezing or agreed increases.
The minister closed his press conference by thanking the large supermarket chains and took the opportunity to try to disassociate himself from his responsibility in the face of the increasing loss of purchasing power of the population: “Beyond the 22.5% devaluation that the IMF imposed on ArgentinaThat cost cannot be paid by the people, we have to make a shared effort”.
Raise everything, except wages
Hours ago, the government had announced an increase in electricity rates. The Secretary of Energy, Flavia Royon, confirmed this Friday that there will be adjustments in the energy service bills, due to the impact of the devaluation applied by the Government after the PASO.
Despite his attempts to excuse himself in the face of the economic crisis that is affecting the population, the truth is that Massa’s management at the head of the Ministry of Economy was strongly repudiated through the ballot box last Sunday, August 13, in the PASO, where Peronism was in third place and thus accumulated a loss of 6 million votes since 2019.
Some consultants already estimate that, as a result of the devaluation, August inflation could reach 14%. As the testimonies collected by this outlet point out after the increases in food that took place this week, “everything is moving up, except our salaries.”
It should be noted that the candidate minister carried out a devaluation -which he deliberately concealed during his electoral campaign- to honor the debt with the IMF that the government of Mauricio Macri and Patricia Bullrich of Cambiemos acquired.
Unión por la Patria has done nothing more than fully comply with the agreement with the organization, and Javier Milei, the winner of the PASO, announced this Friday during a meeting with IMF representatives that he will pay every penny of the debt. “We are not going to default on the IMF or the sovereign debt,” he said. From La Libertad Avanza, they assured that, in case Milei is elected president, he will carry out “an important fiscal adjustment, more important than the one demanded by the Fund itself.
What to do in the face of salary pulverization?
As the statement released by the Unity Left Front pointed out, “those who accuse that ‘the right comes for your rights’, are applying an adjustment and now a devaluation in the same sense as those announced by their electoral opponents: that the working people be whoever pays the adjustment, while the large economic groups increase their profits and the dollars flee”.
The bureaucracies of the CGT and the CTAs are guarantors of the adjustment in progress that Unión por la Patria is carrying out, with Sergio Massa at the helm and the approval of Alberto Fernández, Cristina Kirchner and Juan Grabois.
For this reason, it is urgent to hold assemblies in the places of work, study, and in the neighborhoods to discuss actions to demand an active national strike from these centrals, which is the beginning of a national plan of struggle, and to coordinate actions between unionism from below. combative and anti-bureaucratic grassroots activism, until defeating the IMF adjustment implemented by the government, supported by Bullrich and the far-right Milei who propose to deepen it even more.
From the Left Front, they raised the need to organize:
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
