The national government will begin negotiations with companies in the coming weeks to give continuity to the voluntary agreement known as Fair Prices, after confirming that the program will be extended until the end of July.
Although the initiative is valid until March 31, the Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, brought forward the weekend that it will be extended for another four months. “We proposed the program from day one in two stages, four plus four, in eight months,” Massa said in an interview with the newspaper Perfil.
Within this framework, the Ministry of Economy is already drawing up the new chapter and aims to start negotiations with the companies “in a couple of weeks,” official sources told Télam.
Fair Prices is a voluntary price agreement that was launched by the Government on November 11 at the Néstor Kirchner Cultural Center. The initiative froze the prices of nearly 2,000 products that are part of the basic basket in the food, beverage, dairy, personal hygiene and cleaning items, with the participation of more than 100 companies that represent 86% of mass consumption in Argentina.
The original agreement was joined at the end of November by the oil companies, which agreed that the fuels participate in the Fair Prices program with monthly increases of up to 4% in December, January and February, and 3.8% in March of this year.