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One of the promises of Mauricio Macri's campaign in the 2015 Argentine election race was "zero poverty". Nine months after the start of the next presidential election, the figures are farther from his goal than before his arrival at Casa Rosada. The share of the population of the country considered as poor rose from 29.2% in the third quarter of 2015 to 33.6% during the same period in 2018.
The Argentine economy began to deteriorate more than a year ago. the increase in the US base interest rate, which made US bonds more attractive to investors and emerging market securities less attractive.
The effect is felt throughout Argentina and, in the community of Los Piletones, one of the poorest of Buenos Aires, it has resulted in an increase of 20% of the food demand in the popular restaurant and a 30% reduction of donations. who supports it. The property offers a roundtrip airport shuttle (surcharge). Just queue.
Margarita Barrientos, manager of the Los Piletones restaurant, is one of Argentina's best-known social activists, not least because she fervently supports President Macri. When he was mayor of Buenos Aires, he donated part of his salary to the restaurant.
Despite the proximity and claiming that she will vote in Macri in the upcoming elections, Margarita admits to perceive in her daily life the increase of poverty in the country. In June of last year, he served 2,100 meals a day. In the second half had to increase to 2.5 thousand.
"At the time of (Raúl), Alfonsín (president between 1983 and 1989) and Fernando de la Rua (president between 1999 and 2001) were also difficult, worse still," he said when he was in charge. He was asked about the last time he went through a similar situation. "But in 2012 (under the government of Cristina Kirchner), we reach 2.7 thousand meals a day," he adds. "Poverty comes from years, but before they hide the indexes while people were hungry," he says.
Sociologist Juan Ignacio Bonfiglio of the Catholic University of Argentina, responsible for poverty indicators, says that the number of poor people in the country might have even increased by the end of 2018 due to accelerated inflation and the resulting loss of power. purchase of the worker. Relief is expected in the coming months, however, with salary adjustments. "But we will probably not return to the situation in 2017," he said. "The level of uncertainty is high, but there is no significant improvement scenario."
In 2017, when GDP grew by 2.9%, poverty fell by 4.1 percentage points. For this year, however, the projection is that of a slowdown in the economy and, although poverty is reaching a similar decline in 2017, it will remain higher than it was before the arrival of Macri.
According to economist Andrés Borenstein, of BTG in Argentina, the decline in GDP is expected to start to slow down in the coming months, notably thanks to the energy sector and the resumption of agricultural production . Last year, a record drought wiped out the harvest. The forecast for the economy this year is still down from 1% to 1.5%, but accompanied by a more moderate inflation of 25%. In 2018, the peso devaluation of more than 50% and the withdrawal of public subsidies for services such as transport and energy have allowed inflation to reach 47.6%, its highest level since 1991. This economic outlook – estimates 2.6% of GDP in 2018 – led the opposition to call the recession "Macrisis".
However, for Borenstein, it is not possible to say that the progressive adjustment adopted by Macri is at the origin of the crisis. Some economists point out that the problem of current and budget deficits (which includes international trade and rents) has caused investors to flee the country as interest rates have risen in the United States. "There was no political support for going faster," says the economist. "Macri also had bad luck because of the drought and hardening of the international market."
However, Borenstein asks if the Central Bank was not too supportive of the inflation targets. By the end of 2017, the monetary authorities have eased the 2018 inflation target from 2018 to 10%, which allowed the market to understand that adjustment would no longer be a priority [19659012]! Function (f, b, e, v, n, t, s) {if (f.fbq) returns; n = f.fbq = function () {n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply (n, arguments): n.queue.push (arguments)}; if (! f._fbq) f._fbq = n; n.queue = n.loaded = 0, n.version = 2.0 & # 39 ;; n.queue = []; t = b.createElement (e); t.async =! 0; t.src = v; s = b.getElementsByTagName (e) [0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore (t, s)} (window, document, script, // connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents. fbq (& # 39; init & # 39; ;, & # 39; 1659995760901982 & # 39;); fbq (& quot; Track & # 39; PageView & # 39;);
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