“When someone sneezes in Moscow An Argentine catches a cold“, explained Alberto Fernandez about the effects of globalization during the summit of Mercosur leaders. “Hunger begins to besiege the entire world and in the southern hemisphere are the main victims“, he added.
“We earn selling wheat because the wheat rises, but in turn no one decouples domestic prices and then they make wheat prices rise at the same rate as the international price”, the president recently added to explain the local rise in the price of bread and other flour-based foods.
A correct reading, but with delay. Today many of the world food and fuel prices that were fired when Russia invaded Ukraine, have returned to their pre-war levels, defying the most dire predictions. But many politicians, not only Alberto Fernandezcontinue to warn of the risk of famine and financial crisis in the developing world.
The russia attack on February 24 against Ukraine sent a shock wave through the markets of basic products. But fears that the war would cut off all exports through the Black Sea have proven unfounded.
The grain shipments Russians sailed for months from the docks of Novorossiysk. And grain shipments from the Ukrainian port of Odessa resumed on August 1 following an agreement negotiated by the United Nations with Moscow.
Pressure on commodity markets has eased. And the wolves of Wall Street began to sell their shares after the rise in interest rates by the Federal Reserve, thumbing down bets on rising commodity prices.
Wheat is now less expensive than when the war started. And the brent crude oilthe global benchmark, is hovering around its level in mid-February 97 dollars per barrel. However, markets will remain volatile through 2022 and much of 2023, analysts warn
There are doubts about whether the agreement will be maintained for Ukrainian grain shipments. And the extreme weather eventswith the drought that hit the northern hemisphere recently (as it happened here last summer), are a growing alarm when it comes to forecast crops and prices.
The value of wheat soared 63% in less than two weeks after the war, and oil soared to nearly $128 a barrel. That hit a annual food inflation of at least the 15 percent in a third of the 153 countries tracked by the United Nations World Food Program.
in that lot Argentina is the leader overtaken by Turkeywhere the cost of groceries increased by 95 percent; Iran, which saw food bills rise 87 percent; and Lebanon, with food prices up 332 percent
Y changes in world prices of raw materials will impact for 10 to 12 months in the poorest countries, according to the International Monetary Fund. But they are a importing nations phenomenonwhere one sees in parallel a drop in currency values.
Those of Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Laos and Malawi they have lost at least 25 percent of their value against the dollar. A phenomenon to which Argentina joins despite being a grain exporting country.
