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In Argentina, the enormous inflation is not abating. In October, consumer prices rose by 142.7 percent year-on-year, according to the National Institute of Statistics (Indec). In September, the rate was 138.3 percent. Next weekend, the country will elect a new president.
Compared to the previous month, prices rose by 8.3 percent in October, according to the data. The month-on-month increase thus slowed down, from 12.7 percent in September. Since the beginning of the year, cumulative inflation has reached 120 percent.
“People don’t even complain anymore”
Inflation has reached a new high with the October figure. However, it has been consistently at least in the double-digit range for more than ten years. “People don’t even complain like they used to. They’ve gotten used to it,” says Camila Fuentes, a 27-year-old sales assistant at a pharmacy in central Buenos Aires.
Run-off election on Sunday
Nevertheless, inflation and the depreciation of the peso are at the heart of the election campaign. On Sunday, the ultra-liberal populist Javier Milei will go into the run-off against the economy minister of the current centre-left government, Sergio Massa.
In the first round of voting, the 51-year-old Massa came in first place with more than 36 percent of the vote. Milei, who describes himself as an “anarcho-capitalist” who wants to abolish the central bank and adopt the U.S. dollar as a currency, came in at 30 percent