Only 11 countries will have more price increases in 2019 than Argentina in four months

According to the IMF, the average inflation rate in the world this year will be 3.8%, the same level as in February in Argentina. This week, Indec announced the expected rise in April prices: 3.4% for the month, 55.8% for the last 12 months and 15.6% for the first quarter of the year. 39; year. .

Although the government has all the expectations – and a good deal of its plans, both administrative and electoral – set up a gradual lowering of the index to the presidential elections, the data from the first four months are conclusive with regard to compares with the rest of the world. Only 10 countries will have more inflation throughout the year than Argentina only during this period.

In general, these are nations with serious political and social problems, and even wars. These are, according to IMF annual projections: Venezuela (excluding calculation with incalculable inflation of 10,000,000%, or 4.5% per day), Zimbabwe (73.4%), Sudan (49.6%), Iran (37.2%), South Sudan (24.5%), Liberia (22.3%), Yemen (20%), Angola . and Turkey (17.5%), Uzbekistan (16.5%) and Sierra Leone (15.8%). It should be noted that the comparison is still based on their annualized estimates. Then, taking the top three extreme cases off the table, the rest will have a 2019 inflation rate lower than the local level, where the latest consensus of consultants that the Central Bank gives up, up to present, an average of 40%.

Venezuela, Zimbabwe and Sudan are devastated countries. The extreme situation in the Latin American nation is giving rise every day to fresh news: frustrated coups, two parallel governments, tensions and deaths in the streets and Nicolás Maduro who falters but still manages the country. Venezuela has been dethroned by Venezuela as the "champion of devaluation" and inflation. It is a country that has one of the lowest human development indices (HDIs) in the world and which aims to expel companies, giant power cuts in its territory and to sell elephants to China and Dubai. Sudan, between successive crises, has just suffered a new coup of the military state. The list could also be added to Syria, but the IMF stopped measuring a few years ago.

The 216 other countries and regions declared by the Monetary Fund will have a lower inflation rate than the first quarter of the year..

If you look at the region, you have to advance several positions in the list, after Venezuela and Argentina, to find the first country. Haiti will have a total price increase of 14.9% this year; Uruguay, 7.6%; Nicaragua, 5.1%, Honduras, 4.7% and the rest below the dollarized equator, with 0.6% for the whole year. The average for Latin America and the Caribbean is 6.5%, less than half of what the country recorded between January and April of this year.

At the other end of the ranking

Beyond the annual calculation, and taking the best positioned countries on inflationary issues – generally the most developed – Japan stands out as a country in which the cumulative price increase of about 16% took 30 years; yes, three decades, according to data from the Center for International Economics (CIE), dependent on the Argentine Foreign Ministry. Cumulative consecutive indexes, month after month – of the last local hyperinflationary process in governance Raúl AlfonsínUntil now, Japan has recorded the same price increase as Argentina between January and April.

It took about 8 years for the average of the countries measured by the CIE to reach 4 months here. This is the case, for example, in Belgium and the United Kingdom. Germany demanded 12 years and the United States nine. A good part of the neighbors of the region, between 4 and 6 years old.

The roller coaster of the local economy often loses the general perspective. That is why it is not bad to remember that the world – with the exception of painful and specific exceptions – is accustomed to living without inflation; with food and products and services necessary for everyday life that always cost more or less the same price.