Food and beverages increased by only 0.6% in June, less than half of the CPI.

The latest report from INDEC on the June consumer price index (CPI) revealed that food and non-alcoholic beverages, one of the categories with the greatest impact on the basic basket, recorded an increase of just 0.6%.

This variation was not only lower than the general index for the month, which was 1.6%, but also represented less than half the average, marking a key point in the fight against poverty.

This low inflation consolidates a downward trend in the prices that have the greatest impact on the daily lives of households with lower incomes. Since the evolution of the cost of the basic food basket is decisive for measuring poverty and extreme poverty, this slowdown in the food category allows for the anticipation of a new reduction in the poverty and extreme poverty index.

In year-on-year terms, the food and non-alcoholic beverages category has accumulated an increase of 32.3%, 7.1 percentage points below the general inflation rate (39.4%). This difference also demonstrates that purchasing power over essential goods has stabilized and even improved compared to previous months.

The food data comes in a general context of sharp deceleration of inflation. The June price index was 1.6%, after the historic 1.5% in May, and consolidates the continuation of a disinflationary process that has already seen fourteen consecutive months of year-on-year decline.

Core inflation, which excludes seasonal factors and regulated prices, also showed a notable moderation, standing at 1.7%, its lowest level since May 2020. Meanwhile, goods, another key component for household economies, increased by only 0.8%, the lowest figure since the current series began in 2017.

These data not only reinforce the economic shift undertaken by Javier Milei's government, but are already having concrete effects on the living conditions of the most vulnerable sectors. The sustained decrease in food prices, in particular, could accelerate the decline in the poverty rate in upcoming official reports, a central objective for any economic policy.