Bulk buying to bartering, shopping Argentines get creative
BUENOS AIRES: As the prices of basic foodstuffs such as flour, eggs and oil have increased by anything from 40 per cent to over 100 per cent since the start of the year, Argentines are having to get creative when they go shopping.
The cost of living is on the rise as inflation keeps heading northwards, expected this month to reach 30 per cent for the year – but salaries aren’t following suit and low-income households are feeling the pinch.
From bartering to bulk-buying and bargain-hunting, Argentines face a complicated task to get the most out of their pesos.
“It’s become difficult to do all your shopping in the same place,” says Augustina Saravia in front of the stalls at the weekly market in Nueva Pompeya, a Buenos Aires neighborhood of families on low to lower-middle incomes.
“You walk all day to try to find the best prices.
“Here tomatoes cost 50 pesos per kilogram, at the greengrocer they cost 30,” added Saravia, before heading off to the supermarket to check the prices there.
Most customers in the street market spent their time similarly, checking prices, moving on elsewhere to compare, and sometimes returning to where they started before finally making a purchase.
According to Argentina’s national statistics institute ( INDEC), inflation over the first eight months of 2018 was 24.3 per cent, while it is expected to reach 30 per cent by the end of September. Oil has increased in price by 40 per cent, eggs by 56 per cent but flour has more than doubled in price (115 per cent).
One method of keeping down the shopping bills is bulk-buying, something that is increasingly on offer in Argentina, although it is not always convenient.
Mother of four Vanessa Ledesma, who is training to be a nurse, travelled 40 minutes by bus south of Buenos Aires to reach a wholesaler – but it was worth it.
“For the price of a kilogram of rice bought every day in my neighbourhood, here I can buy two family packets that last the whole month,” she said.
She comes once a week in search of the best prices.
This time, though, her shopping cart contains only four or five different products.
“I didn’t buy much because the prices have gone up,” she said.
During August alone, the price of tomatoes increased by 10 per cent, chicken eight per cent, potatoes seven: the list goes on.
It has all come about because of a crash in the value of the peso, which dropped 20 per cent in just two days in August and is down around 50 per cent since the start of the year.
The peso is affected by a crisis of confidence, with investors preferring to exchange their unstable pesos for the greater assurances the dollar offers. — AFP