The national government and the United Supermarkets Association (ASU) reached an agreement by which the price of beef will be frozen during the long weekend, after the increases in the price of the farm this week.
This was confirmed by official sources and the business chamber, whose understanding not to increase the values in the gondola will be in force until Monday inclusive.
The supermarket chains that will accompany the measure will be Coto, Changomás, Cencosud (Jumbo, Disco and Vea) Carrefour, La Anónima and Día%, firms that also participate in the offer of popular cuts at discounted prices.
Likewise, it was indicated that “next week the talks will continue with the aim of arriving at a consensual solution that guarantees the stability of the price of meats, thus avoiding shocks that affect consumers in the last part of the year.”
The commitment assumed by the supermarkets with the national government arises after the strong increases that were registered in recent days in the Liniers market in the prices of consumer property, which on average, made a 20 percent jump between Friday last week and this Tuesday.
The evolution of prices
In fact, in that period, the price of the bull went from 208.43 pesos per kilo to 221.57, while the young bull grew from 214.79 to 247.10 and the heifer from 208.46 to 237.13.
At the close of this Friday, prices showed a slight decrease, data exposed by the Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán, in an interview by Radio With You, where he also indicated that the national government “is carrying out all the necessary steps to stabilize the price of the key products in the basket.” Thus, the young bull stood at 220.21 pesos, the young bull at 234.26 and the heifer at 224.80.
Guzmán held a meeting yesterday with his Productive Development peers, Matías Kulfas; of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Julián Domínguez, and with the Secretary of Internal Trade, Roberto Feletti, in which the dynamics of meat prices were analyzed to “guarantee their stability”.
Beef is one of the staple foods that increased the most in the year-on-year comparison, even above inflation and which maintained uninterrupted growth since the end of last year.
The national government decided in mid-May to close exports and then establish a scheme that allowed exporting 50 percent of the monthly volume sold the previous year and prohibited the dispatch of seven popular cuts until the end of the year.
As of its implementation, in the July-October period the price of meat registered a stabilization and accumulated a decrease of 3 percent, according to measurements of the Institute for the Promotion of Beef (Ipcva), despite the fact that in the comparison year-on-year, the average price was 70.3 percent.
On the other hand, to mitigate these increases, the Government at the beginning of last month renewed an agreement with the export sector to offer 6,000 tons of cuts per month at affordable prices in more than 1,000 outlets.
