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| A butcher walks with a shopping cart at a local market, as Argentina's annual inflation rate tore past 100 percent in February, the country's statistics agency said on Tuesday, the first time it has hit triple figures since a period of hyperinflation in 1991, over three decades ago, in Buenos Aires, Argentina March 14. Reuters-Yonhap |
Inflation in Argentina came in at 102.5 percent in the 12 months to February, exceeding the symbolic triple-digit mark and reaching a new 32-year high.
Latin America's third largest economy saw inflation grow 6.6 percent in the month of February and 13.1 percent since the beginning of the year, the Indec national statistics institute said.
Argentina has one of the highest inflation rates in the world.
In 2022, it reached 94.8 percent, the country's highest annual figure since 1991, when it exceeded 171 percent.
The two previous years had seen hyperinflation at more than 2,000 percent.
The government has set a 2023 inflation target of 60 percent.
Argentina has been grappling with an economic crisis for years, registering double-digit inflation in each of the last 12 years.
In December, the center-left government of President Alberto Fernandez reached an agreement with food and personal hygiene companies to freeze the prices of around 2,000 products until March, and capping rises on another 30,000 products to four percent a month.
Some 36.5 percent of Argentina's 47 million population lives in poverty, including 2.6 million in extreme poverty, according to official figures from mid-2022.
Argentina's economy grew by 5.2 percent in 2022, compared to a 10.3 percent the previous year, which ended three years of recession.
On Monday, the IMF said it had reached an agreement with the government in Buenos Aires on the fourth review of an aid package for the South American country, paving the way for the disbursement of some $5.3 billion.
The new tranche of funding would bring the funds allocated to Argentina since the signing of the aid program in March 2022 to $28.8 billion.
Argentina's growth for 2023 is expected to slow to just two percent, according to the World Bank.
If that does happen, it would be the first time in 15 years that Argentina had experienced three successive years of growth. (AFP)
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