BUENOS AIRES, Nov. 13 ( Reuters )- Hard-up Argentines are increasingly turning to second-hand clothing markets to find affordable deals and to make extra money from selling used clothing as inflation is at 140 % and rising.
The region is not the North American country. The worst crisis in years is affecting the 2 business, a major exporter of grains. Two-fifths of the population are poor, and a potential recession is upsetting Argentina’s national election run-off on Sunday.
Rising vote resentment is pushing a dramatic stranger, Javier Milei, who is only slightly ahead in polls to defeat economy minister Sergio Massa, whose bet has been hampered by his inability to control rising prices.
” You ca n’t just stroll into the mall and make the same old purchases.” Aylen Chiclana, a 22-year-old scholar in Buenos Aires, said that rates nowadays are unimaginable.
New clothes are now more expensive than they were a year ago, and that order only represents more than one-third of Argentina’s monthly minimum income.
When authorities release official data for October on Monday, annualized inflation, which is already 138 %, is expected to increase even further. The monthly increase alone is estimated to be around 10 %, down slightly from peaks in August and September.
Economists attribute Argentina’s persistent high prices to wealth printers and a pervasive lack of faith in the local peso. Over the past month, prices has increased to its highest level since 1991.
Beatriz Lauricio, a 62-year-old semi-retired teacher, claimed that she and her husband, an employee of the bus company, go on the weekends to the clothing reasonable to buy used clothing in order to make ends meet.
We’re lower middle class, I may say, middle-class. We have jobs, but we must attend the fair,” she said, adding that the child’s money” collapsed” when it was postponed one trip due to bad weather.
We do n’t do this as an extra to travel to Brazil; rather, it’s a daily necessity, according to Lauricio.
The clothes fair’s planner, Mara Silvina Perasso, claimed that many people shop there because prices have increased much more quickly than wages. Tigre is located outside of Buenos Aires. According to capital controls and restrictions on foreign exchange trades, the local minimum wage is 132, 000 peso, or$ 377 at the official exchange rate but only half that at actual city levels.
She claimed that given the current state of the economy, people can purchase items for their families at prices that are 5 % or 10 % of what they would pay for clothing.
Mara Teresa Ortiz, a 68-year-old retirement, makes 400 pesos per minute, or roughly$ 1, from casual sewing work in addition to her pension. She attends the good in order to be able to purchase clothing that she often was n’t.
We are unable to purchase fresh items. You cannot purchase new clothing, flip-flops, jeans, shirts, or T-shirts. You are also not permitted to purchase any new clothing. Therefore, you must search for them at the fair, she said.
( 1 = 349.9500 pesos in Argentina )
Writing by Lucila Sigal, reporting by Claudia Martini and Miguel Lo Bianco, and processing by Rod Nickel and Adam Jourdan
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