BUENOS AIRES, Jan 13 (AFP): Argentina registered inflation of 94.8 per cent in 2022, its highest annual figure since 1991, the Indec national statistics institute said on Thursday.
Latin America's third-largest economy has one of the highest inflation rates in the world. But December's monthly figure of 5.1 per cent continued a general downward trend since a peak of 7.4 per cent in July.
The annual figure, nonetheless, was a huge jump on the 50.9 per cent inflation from 2021. The government has set a 2023 inflation target of 60 percent.
For most Argentines, going to the supermarket is a disheartening experience.
"You stand in front of the shelves and analyze prices as if you were picking out jewelry," said Julian Rattano, 66, a retired chemist.
Prices for daily staples rose monthly, even weekly, last year. A liter of milk rose 320 per cent in 2022, while cooking oil shot up 456 per cent and a kilo of sugar soared 490 percent, the Abeceb consultancy says.
Price rises were steepest in clothing and footwear, at more than 120 per cent, and hotels and restaurants, where they jumped a little under 109 per cent.
It was bad news for the government just nine months out from a general election.
These are the worst yearly figures since Argentina recorded an inflation rate of more than 171 percent in 1991, during the presidency of Carlos Menem.
The two previous years had seen hyperinflation at more than 2,000 per cent.
In 1991, Menem launched the convertibility plan, pegging the Argentine peso to the US dollar in a bid to rein in hyperinflation. But that move was abandoned a decade later.
Argentina has been grappling with an economic crisis for years, registering double-digit inflation in each of the last 12 years.
Causes of inflation are multiple, including persistent deficit spending, constant devaluation and external factors like the war in Ukraine that affected energy and grain prices.
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