Buenos Aires, Apr 15 (EFE).- Argentine President Mauricio Macri on Monday predicted an inflation “peak” or spike in the figures for March – to be released later in the week – but added that the country is moving “step by step” to “eradicate” inflation, which totaled 51.3 percent last year.
“We expect that this (inflation) peak that we will have in March will be a (point), starting at which – over the years – we’ll be moving forward step by step to eradicate it and be one more country in the huge majority (of nations) who have single-digit inflation,” Macri said during the inauguration of a company’s building in Buenos Aires.
The government is scheduled to release the March inflation figures on Tuesday.
The president emphasized that the government has begun “doing what is necessary” and “not spending more than it has” with the aim of “eradicating” certain “cultural behaviors” of the past that resulted in “80 years with an average inflation rate of 62.6 percent.”
Macri’s remarks come less than two weeks after the Argentine Central Bank released a report in which it raised to 36 percent its predicted inflation rate for 2019.
According to the same study, experts are expecting Argentina’s inflation to be 23 percent in 2020.
Macri said, despite these forecasts, that he was optimistic about ending the inflation spiral that creates “enormous instability.”
“Inflation generates enormous instability, quite apart from affecting everyone in making it to the end of the month. We know that it’s costing many people more to make it to the end of the month as a result of inflation,” he added.
As a measure designed to ensure that Argentina becomes “a country in which there’s no more inflation,” Macri mentioned the need to prepare general budgets “that have to be balanced” and that allow people “to stop living by borrowing.”
He also issued a call for unity to solve certain problems that have been plaguing the country “for decades.”
“If, together, we resolve these deep-seated problems that have been dragging us down for decades and decades, the future that awaits us is a very good future for everyone,” he said.