5 economic indicators at their worst level in ten years

One of the curiosities of this election is that the ruling party has hoisted its Minister of the Economy to the countryside. In all the polls that circulate in the political sphere, the economy is singled out as one of the main concerns (along with insecurity) of the population.

So why is the government campaigning with what should be a weak flank? Part of this explanation is that Martin guzman (and the rest of the official cast as well as the opposition) talk about the “past”, which is to say they blame each other on one side and the other. But beyond political quarrels, Is the economy as bad as in other elections?

A work of Facimex values say that variables that affect voting reach depressed levels compared to the last 5 elections, especially employment and real wages. But other variables that reflect macroeconomic fundamentals, such as the fiscal position or the current account, perform better than in previous elections. “Generally, in election years, the variables that families perceive arrive better than the fundamentals, but this time it does not happen,” they limit.

Total crisis indicators

When it comes to numbers, according to this report, the following stands out. Regarding the variables that have the most weight at the time of the vote (considered to have an impact on social humor), the party in power is clearly the loser:

1. Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is approximately $ 14,500, the lowest in the last decade at the time of the vote. The peak occurred during the 2011 election, when it was 17,226.

2. In terms of private employment, it also comes at the worst time of the last 10 years. It is 5.8 million, even worse than before STEP 2019. The best election year in terms of employment was 2015 with 6.26 million people registered in the private sector.

3. This is also wrong in terms of private wages recorded: the average (in constant pesos in August of this year) is 94,000 pesos. It is also the lowest of the last decade.

4. The consumer confidence index is also shown at the bottom of the table. This indicator is at 39.8 and is another sign of private sector pessimism (above 50 is considered optimistic). In the last five elections before this year, this index has consistently set higher records. Even consumer confidence in PASO 2019 was higher than today.

5. The only item where this year is not worse than the previous decade is in terms of inflation, but barely. In 2011 people went to vote with an annualized inflation rate of 23.5%, in 2013 it was 22.8%, in 2015 it was 23%, in 2017 it was 22% and in 2019 it was 22.8%. was 54.4%. This year, according to Facimex, they will vote with an inflation rate of 51.7%.

Gap and reservations don’t help either

Among the macroeconomic variables, the government does not have too many positive figures to show, according to the work of Facimex Valores.

For example, the exchange rate differential, taking that implicit in ADRs (Argentine papers that are traded abroad) is 83%, a record for all the last elections. The worst before this year in terms of the distance between the official dollar and that resulting from the arbitrage of financial assets was in 2013 when it reached 58%. The lowest, except for the 2017 and 2019 elections where there was no gap (it was zero) due to the unification of the forex market, was in 2011 when they went to vote with a difference of 12%.

In terms of international reserves, the Above all It doesn’t come at the worst time of the last ten years, but it’s not far off: They stand at US $ 11,993 million net of reserves, swaps and repos. The worst was, in fact, in 2015 when Macrismo took over (they were $ 5.155 million). Before the 2019 STEP, they were in better condition than today (US $ 22,000 million) and the peak was reached in 2011 when they reached 39,000 million US dollars.

In other elements, such as the tax result (which does not affect the vote) it will not be the worst of the sample either but, curiously, it is only exceeded (badly) by the way in which the elections of 2015 have been reached (legacy of the last year of CFK). For this reason, the Frente de Todos manages to avoid the worst record of the decade by going to vote in fiscal terms, in terms of reserves, due to the poor performance of the government of the current vice-president.